[drupal-devel] Making Drupal fully 'community-driven': A Proposal for restructuring the Drupal project

[Nedjo Rogers]

Following up (finally!) on a commitment I made some months back, I've
prepared a set of concrete proposals for renewing Drupal's (arguably)
outdated decision making structure.  They are posted as a forum topic at:

 http://drupal.org/node/15916

Please read and comment!

The 'teaser':

Drupal - a highly promising and excellently designed open source software -
prides itself on being "community-driven". A primary Drupal interest is
promoting collaboration and the sharing of views and perspectives.

Yet, paradoxically, the project decision-making structure- a relic from its
very early days - is notable for its closed, centralized, and fixed nature.
Most decisions on the Drupal 'core' are still made personally by the project
owner and founder, Dries. The only exceptions are decisions made by one of
two close associates of his. This contrasts sharply with many other open
source projects, which are build on the basis of community decision making.

To fully mature as a project, Drupal arguably needs to bring its structure
in line with its community spirit.

Hence this set of concrete proposals. Their aim is to set out new, expanded
roles for decision making, while ensuring that the current values of
rigourous code evaluation and development are maintained.