Supporting the Drupal Association and investing towards an Open Source Dividend

Open source as a top sport

If Drupal was a sport, the Drupal Association would be the International Olympic Committee (IOC). They don’t practice the sports on their own, they do not vouch for a specific nation, nor do they have a direct financial benefit. Mind you, a non-profit organisation doesn’t mean nobody gets paid. The IOC’s main job is to make sure the Olympic Games happen, and that the infrastructure, the contracts with the countries are set up, that in the end the sports are represented by the best and that fair-play is guaranteed.

The Drupal Association isn’t that different, just replace sports with Drupal. They support the infrastructure needed to make sure that agencies, hosting companies, etc. can all benefit from the Open Source Drupal project with the tools that are more than just source code. Think of events, composer repositories, collaboration tools, sponsorships benefits management, etc.. 

Without such a central component, many companies like Dropsolid wouldn’t be as productive as we are today, nor would we have the power to have such an impact on the world that is in dire need of digital transformation in these times. 

 

Even the Olympics suffer from COVID-19

Unfortunately, the global pandemic has a severe impact on the Drupal Association with DrupalCon Minneapolis that needed to be postponed. Even though Open Source is crucial for the world at times of crisis, at the same time it's being hit.

"People all over the world can access open source technology to create solutions for crisis communication, remote education, and community cooperation."

- Forbes, Daniel Newman

And that is where we, and maybe also you, stepped in.

 

We play the game, we make it better

Dropsolid is proud of identifying itself as a maker in order to sustain the growth of Open Source. In the last 3 months we were attributed to 61 maker credits on Drupal.org, which places us 32nd worldwide. 

Next to being a maker we also understand that hard cash is needed as an investment for the future. Not only do we consider the money that goes into the Drupal Association as a donation, we see it as a crucial investment, with a return an Open Source Dividend, in the future of Dropsolid. 

“These pivots can only happen in one kind of organisation. Organisations that have embraced digital transformation. These are the organisations that were ready for technology. These are the organisations that looked at a piece of technology and said: this can be used differently. They have the leaders who were ready for change. They have the cultures that were ready to step up. This is what digital transformation for good looks like. “

- Forbes, Daniel Newman

We sponsored Drupalcon Amsterdam 2019 as a Diamond sponsor and have early-on committed to being a Diamond Sponsor of Drupalcon Barcelona 2020, delayed or not. Also several local initiatives such as Drupal Dev Days, Drupaljam or Drupalcamp London. All these sponsorships in the last years amounted to more than 60.000 euro. However, in this difficult time we feel like we need to do more.  

That is why we decided to upgrade our partnership with the Drupal Association to a premium level at the end of March. We are in conversation with the Association about another 11.000 euro support. 

To stay in the game, we all need to play

Like the Olympics couldn't happen without the support of the IOC, we need the Drupal Association to support the global community of Drupal athletes.

We are proud supporters of the community. We hope that you will follow in our footsteps. It’s the right thing to do, and that is what we stand for.

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