How can we foster open source contribution from companies to Drupal?

Releasing software as open source is becoming more and more popular for companies (Facebook, Google, Gitlab, MongoDB, etc.).

However, in most cases these companies sponsor most of the development themselves, because they use the software internally or run their business model on it.

For Drupal it is the same: Acquia is the biggest sponsor of development, followed by much smaller agencies and individual contributors. Often the contribution of agencies and individuals is more irregular, because they often occur when there is time to contribute or certain features are urgently needed. Unlike many other software, Drupal is not owned by Acquia.

In order to keep up with other fast growing CMS and DXP systems or even outperform them, we need much more contribution than today. For this we need to find ways to foster regular contributions from companies at a much larger scale.

While indirect benefits such as marketplace visibility, recruitment possibilities, and partnerships are clear, too often companies do not dedicate fixed resources on contribution, because the direct business impact is not strong enough.

In this panel we will discuss how the ecosystem of Drupal could be evolved to give companies faster and more direct return on their investments.

The panel consists of leading managers from agencies, infrastructure providers, and system integrators that offer services around Drupal.