We were very pleased to have a chance to interview Dries Buytaert, founder of the legendary Drupal content management system. He shares his thoughts on its success, future and how it came to be in this intriguing and indepth discussion. We had so many questions, that we are only publishing part one while he works on the second half. Here you go.
CC: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today, Dries. We’d like to cover a few areas during this interview.. specifically Drupal and your latest venture, Acquia.
CC: Can you tell us a little about your background and how you became involved in the world of Content Management Systems?
DB: I was a student at the University of Antwerp in Belgium around 1999. I was doing web development with CGI and server-side includes, but I wanted to learn more about technologies like PHP and MySQL. Also, at the same time, we had the need for an internal messaging system at our student dorm. So, I wrote a simple message board. Then when I graduated, I decided to move my internal message board onto the internet.
CC: Our understanding is that Drupal originally started as a BBS system, having been very involved in the BBS realm ourselves, we find this very interesting. Can you tell us a little bit about how it came to be and was it as popular as a BBS as it is today?
DB: Drupal began as an internal message board that I used to manage my student activities. We just used it in my student dorm to communicate about dinner times, etc. Once I graduated, I began transforming it into a news and discussion website: www.drop.org.
After a year or so, I released the software behind drop.org as Drupal 1.0.0, and Drupal officially came to be on January 15, 2001. Contributors still celebrate this as Drupal’s birthday every year.
