Talking Drupal #574 - UN Open Source Week

[00:00:00] John: This is Talking Drupal, a weekly chat about web design development from a group of people with one thing in common: We love Drupal. This is episode 574, UN Open Source Week On today's show, we're talking about the UN, open source, and Drupal with our guests, Tim Lehnen and Henry Poole. We'll also cover Live Update as our module of the week.

Welcome to Talking Drupal. Our guests today are Tim Lehnen and Henry Poole. Tim, for the past 12 years, has led the Drupal Association engineering team, whose mission it is to build the tools that help the community build Drupal. Tim, welcome back to the show. Thanks very much. 20th episode.

[00:00:50] Tim L: Yeah. It's a record.

Um, I'm gonna... I'm, I'm looking forward to 20 more, I think.

[00:00:56] John: There you go. Well, we'll be, we'll be happy to have you. Uh, Henry Poole is the CEO of CivicAction, leading the organization's multi-year strategic transition towards digital public infrastructure and multi-vendor co-operation

[00:01:12] Nic: Coopetition

[00:01:14] John: Coopetition?

Yes . I was like, to dismantle proprietary vendor capture across government IT. Building on over two decades of leadi- leadership in free and open source civic tech, he actively shapes federal and state procurement policies to advance exit readiness, open governance, and public data sovereignty. Henry, welcome to the show, and thanks for joining us.

[00:01:40] Henry: Thank you for having me.

[00:01:42] John: That's right, folks. I'm back. John Picozzi, solutions architect at EPAM, and today my co-hosts are, joining us for the third week, our first time together, Tim Sharp, web developer at Appalachian State University.

[00:01:59] Tim S: What's

[00:01:59] John: going on, Tim?

[00:02:00] Tim S: Not much. Glad to be here. Having fun.

[00:02:03] John: There you go.

Welcome back. And we're glad to, we're glad to have you. And, uh, last but certainly not least, Tim, uh, Tim Laflin. I'm just... Everybody's Tim today. Nic, sorry, I apologize. Nic Laflin, founder at nLightened Development.

[00:02:17] Nic: I'm looking forward to this episode. I'm, I'm very interested to hear a little bit more about that cooperation, competition, uh, tagline.

[00:02:26] John: Yeah, that- Yeah ... that was a, that, I, I read that word like three times, and then I said it, and then I reread it, and I was like, "I definitely pronounced that wrong. I'm not familiar with that one." So we'll definitely, we'll definitely get into that maybe a little bit. But before we do, let's turn it over to Martin Anderson-Clutz, a product marketing manager for Drupal at Acquia, to talk about our module of the week.

What do you have for us this week, Martin?

[00:02:52] Martin: Thanks, John. Have you ever wanted parts of your Drupal pages, like blocks, views, or notifications, to update in real time without a page refresh and without having to stand up extra infrastructure to do it? There's a module for that. It's called Live Update, and it was created in September of 2026 by Alessandro Feio of Mindcore, and it has a 1.0.0alpha6 version available which works with Drupal 11 and 12.

It is actively maintained. In fact, that latest release was just a week ago. There is no security coverage yet, since it was just created and only has alpha releases, and it does have test coverage. And for documentation, there is a detailed README plus a roadback- roadmap doc and built-in demo page. There are no open issues yet on Drupal.org, and it is officially in use by 14 sites.

Now, Live Update positions itself as a generic real-time event layer for Drupal. Modules publish events to named channels, and browsers subscribed to those channels update just the affected parts of the page. Out of the box, it uses plain HTTP polling back to Drupal every five seconds by default, so it works on pretty much any host with no extra services.

The transport is pluggable though. Set it to automatic and it'll try WebSockets first, then an experimental server-sent events submodule, then fall back to polling. For site builders, the base module adds an update this block live checkbox to any block in the block layout, no code needed. There's also a whole suite of submodules: live refresh, views displays, single entity updates, user presence blocks like who's viewing this page, a notification bell with toasts, queue progress monitoring, remote JSON API tables, and an admin dashboard with an event monitor.

One I think editorial teams will like, Live Update form, which warns you when someone else is editing the same content you are. For developers, publishing is one line, a Live Update publish helper or an injectable service, and on the front end, you can either use data attributes in your markup or subscribe through a small JavaScript API.

Every channel is access controlled, and modules can weigh in on who's allowed to subscribe, though, um, to subscribe through by implementing hook LiveUpdate channel access. Under the hood, events are stored in their own database table with an optional time to live, and expired ones get cleaned up on crop.

Polling clients just ask for anything newer than the latest event ID they saw. There's a solid set of Drush commands too, including one to publish a test event straight from the command line, which is handy for debugging. One caveat there, this is very new and still alpha, so I'd treat this as one to watch and experiment with rather than deploy into production today.

And if polling isn't enough for you, there's a companion project, LiveUpdate Go. It's the push transport LiveUpdate is designed around, a small Drupal module plus a standalone gateway written in Go that gives browsers a native WebSocket connection. Drupal stays in charge. It checks channel access, hands the browser a short-lived signed token, and sign, sends signed events to the gateway, which fans them out to connected clients.

You run the gateway as its own service with s- System Md or Docker behind a TLS reverse proxy. The README is very clear that you shouldn't try to launch it from PHP. It can scale horizontally using Redis or Velki, uh, PubSub. One gateway can serve multiple Drupal sites with isolated tenants, and if it ever goes down, LiveUpdate falls back automatically and switches back once it recovers.

It has the same maintainer created at the start of October and also in alpha with an alpha one release and one reported site using it so far. So let's talk about LiveUpdate.

[00:06:33] John: So admittedly, um, I, uh, uh, for, for our listeners, uh, right now, I, I asked about this being an actual Drupal module before the show, and just now I realized that I actually looked at the module page and was like, "Oh, this is cool."

Um, uh, so I knew that it was a, uh, a Drupal module. I will say LiveUpdate, um, naming things is hard, and, uh, LiveUpdate definitely, um, made me think of like, I don't know, updating Drupal core. But, um, I digress. So question. Uh, I- I'm imagining like, and I think they, uh, on the module page they They use, uh, currencies, like updating currencies in real time as an example.

I looked at this and I'm like, "Oh, it'd be cool to, like, add a stock ticker to your website," right? Uh, I'm wondering how easy that is, right? Like, how much kind of custom development or how in the weeds do I need to get? Like, if I, if I find a feed of, like, you know, real time stock ticker data, um, using this module, is it, like, a, a couple of clicks to kind of set something like that up?

Or do I have to, like... Do I have to, you know, build a, build a custom module and then use this as a, as a dependency and kind of go down that road?

[00:07:51] Martin: So my understanding, and I, you know, obviously full caveat here that I haven't actually had a chance to sort of try this out and, and stand it up. But my understanding is y- if you can build a view and set that for live updates, then- Mm

then that could be sort of probably the lightweight way to get started with something like that. Just, um, you know, whether those are, like, storage entities or something like that, that, you know, you just sort of, like, update the entities and then that should cause the view to refresh. Yeah. Is probably the easiest way to get going with something like that.

I mean, when I see a module like this, the example I always go to in my head is one that a higher ed customer asked for a while back, which is they actually have dedicated systems around managing alerts because they may get, uh, you know, things around... It could be, you know, buildings that are going offline because they lost power- Mm

or something. But also if they've got, like, sadly, an active shooter situation or something like that, to be able to push out- Mm ... c- uh, notifications in as real time as possible. So, um, you know, obviously depending on whether or not you have sort of the, the resources to, to sort of stand up the live update go and do that in kind of more of a real time s- genuine push way, is probably the, the best way.

[00:08:58] Nic: Yeah.

[00:08:59] Martin: But it's cool that it has a couple of different strategies that you can use depending on, you know, what your available environment looks like.

[00:09:06] Nic: Yeah. The, the alert, alert, alert is a good example. It's basically, if you imagine if you refresh the page and saw different content, instead of having to refresh the page, you see the new content immediately.

Um, so for people that might keep the page, the same page open for a long time, um, they don't have to refresh. Now, the downside is it's very easy to overload your servers

[00:09:27] Tim S: probably with something like this

[00:09:29] Nic: if you don't know what you're doing. But it's a much more, uh, accessible way. Like I've built polling systems, like using native web components.

It's just hitting an endpoint. This, I think, just makes it easier to set that up and kind of standardizes the access control side. Um, definitely interesting. Something I'll keep in mind. Um- Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a cool, it's a cool little module

[00:09:55] Tim S: I do like that they put a live demo on the, uh, module page. I think that really helps, you know, as you're starting to explore, uh- Yeah

different modules. You know, being able to actually see, you know, a rendered example that you can engage with. So props to the developer for doing that.

[00:10:15] John: Oh, I'm seeing the live demo link now. Now I'm, now I'm gonna have to go look at that 'cause, um- After the show. No, I'm looking at it right now. It's fine.

Don't worry about it. Um, I guess, I guess I'm still a little confused as to how the li- like, how is the, you know, the API endpoint that you're pulling this data from mapped to, like, your on-page content? You s- you had said, like, a entity storage, Arne. So is it, like, a field mapping? Like, this field pulls data from this, this value of the, of the API?

[00:10:48] Martin: So it seems like you have to sort of explicitly say, "These are the pieces that, that need the live refresh," so that it's not trying to sort of, like-

[00:10:55] John: Mm-hmm ...

[00:10:55] Martin: in real time connect everything for, you know, every element on the page.

[00:10:59] John: Got it.

[00:11:00] Martin: Got it. So, you know, in the case of the, um, the demo, if, uh, you know, any listeners wanna go there, they're gonna be able to see there's a set of currencies.

Mm. And then you can sort of either wait for it to refresh, and it's got a little load bar, or there's a button you can use to sort of trigger an immediate update.

[00:11:16] John: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:16] Martin: There's a different one for, uh, weather. Mm-hmm. So at, at any different point you can sort of get, you know, updating weather forecasts, and then there's one with Brazil holidays, which I can't assume would change that often.

But it's kind of, you know, interesting to have three different examples. So on that one page you've got three different examples, uh, but depending on, you know, what information a particular site wants to display, knowing that there's going to be updates on a fairly regular basis, you know, they can designate those specifically to make sure that they, they update on some kind of appropriate basis.

[00:11:49] John: I actually love all three of these examples, especially the holiday one. You, you joke that they don't update all that much, but they at least update annually. And I think, like, being able to dynamically pull that in from a, from, like, a, a root calendar or something like that is, like, is pretty, pretty good example of a, of a great way to use this.

I mean, I, you know, obviously the currency thing, going back to, like, currencies or stocks, um, I now am very interested to try to, like, play around with this module and see if, see, like, how it, how it, uh, how it works.

[00:12:21] Nic: An- another thing that's kind of interesting is it- it's almost like BigPipe but with, um, ongoing requests.

So I think you can probably get something in here that, um, strips out the block hashtag so the page render array itself isn't, um- Uh, removed when that content updates, right? Like it normally would.

[00:12:45] John: Oh, oh, oh. 'Cause it's already

[00:12:47] Nic: reading from a

[00:12:47] John: live feed You mean BigPipe in the way that, like, BigPipe only loads parts of pages, not, not the fact that, like, it invalidates all the, all the cache tags.

[00:12:54] Nic: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And maybe... And so m- 'Cause the thing is if the block is gonna update programmatically anyway through an API, you don't, you don't need to know that it's an invalid cache object. You just- Mm ... get a placeholder and replace it when it comes in, and then you can keep it updated. So it, it may allow you to, if you have a couple of blocks or a lot of pages that are updated, it can allow you to keep that stuff in sync without constantly invalidating all pages on your site.

Um, which-

[00:13:22] John: But, but I wonder, like, if you're building it as part of, like, a larger block or, or entity, right? Like, you probably want some of those other pieces to be cached, right? So, like-

[00:13:33] Nic: Well, it's a, I think it's a per block opt-in, if I'm remembering-

[00:13:36] John: Got it. Got it. Got

[00:13:37] Nic: it ... if that's

[00:13:37] John: right. So. That makes sense.

[00:13:38] Nic: Yeah.

[00:13:39] Martin: I think one thing I should also point out is, particularly if you think you might be using the polling strategy, using this module seems like it could start causing your, your pages to start consuming a lot more requests when people come to your pages. Mm-hmm. So if that is one of the metrics that your hosting company charges you based on, you know, maybe just have a conversation with them before you go ahead and start putting this on a bunch of pages.

[00:14:04] John: Good call. Good call. Always, always good to have those conversations up front. Uh, Martin, thank you for providing us a very interesting module of the week. If folks wanted to suggest a module, um, or connect with you at the various events that you happen to be at, how could they do that?

[00:14:22] Martin: Uh, always happy to talk about candidates for module of the week in the talking Drupal channel of Drupal Slack, or folks can find me on a variety of Drupal and social platforms as mandclu.

And this coming weekend I will actually be in Vancouver for the Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit, and the following week at the Southwestern Ontario Drupal camp. So, uh, always happy to connect with folks in person.

[00:14:46] John: I happen, I happen to know next month you're gonna be at the New England Drupal camp as well.

[00:14:51] Martin: I'm definitely looking forward to that one, too.

[00:14:53] John: This guy gets around.

[00:14:55] Henry: I, I have a thought. I have a quick thought on, on the use case for it, which is, uh, um, uh, beds available for, uh, you know, in different cities. You know, like, and also food. Hmm. Um, we do a lot of benefits work. Um, we don't really do cities, we do the federal, but that kind of information could be really valuable.

Somebody's coming, they're looking for a place for their family, um, for to stay, you know, for a night. Hmm. Um, and, you know, having that information fresh could be, you know, could be useful. There's probably some really good civic cases that, um, that governments could really use. So anyway, as, as an idea for an example, you might think about that.

[00:15:41] John: Huh. Very cool. Those are pretty cool as well.

[00:15:43] Henry: Awesome.

[00:15:44] John: Thanks a lot, Martin.

[00:15:45] Henry: Yeah.

[00:15:45] John: All right.

[00:15:46] Martin: Thanks everyone. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.

[00:15:49] John: All right. Let's jump into our primary topic. Uh, Nic, uh, Nic, nope, Tim. Eventually I'll get your names right, I swear. I'm just getting back into this podcasting thing. It's been a, been a few weeks.

Um, Tim, I'm gonna point this question at, at you. Um, for those that might not know, what is UN Open Source Week, and why has the United Nations made open source a focus?

[00:16:17] Tim L: Yeah, so, um, there's a couple, couple motivations behind this. So United Nations Open Source Week started as a pretty small, somewhat informal event maybe four years ago, I think.

And I th- I think- Mm-hmm ... this was e- effectively the fourth edition, although in the past it was sort of, the, the first time around it was a single-day event, and I think the same for the second one, and then it became more what it is today. And the purpose is to bring in the technology side of the problem space that the UN puts a focus on.

So the, the United Nations organizes a lot of what they're doing around what's, what are called the sustainable development goals. So the sustainable development goals are 17 t- goals with a s- bunch of underlying targets that were set out by the United Nations for making the world a better place, basically.

So the goals are things like no poverty, zero hunger, quality education, gender equality, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption, climate action, like, and partnership, international partnership is one of these goals. Decent work and economic growth. So- Mm-hmm ... these are, these are UN-wide organizing principles for- Mm

a lot of the programs that they're trying to work on. And when it came to the technology space, the, the question was what would, what would sort of most align with that? And they've ultimately decided that the fundamental kind of principles of open source communities are very, very much aligned with, um, the principles of the United Nations.

Um, the concept of, uh, international cooperation, of building things collectively for, uh, the public good. All of these things are so highly aligned that the UN itself began adopting a lot of open source, and then decided, hey, they could be, they could play a role in connecting the delegations from, from all the countries represented with open source maintainers and with people from industry who might wanna, wanna get involved.

So I think that's the, the kind of the basic origin of how this came together, and then they've run with it as it evolved. And I wanna quote something on this topic that, that, um, one of the, uh, primary officials who's involved in organizing this, um, uh, mentioned. So, uh, let me see if I can find the right name.

Yeah, so, um, Omar Mohsin, uh, who's a part of the UN and actually leads, among other things, the Drupal practice of the UN- Oh, okay. I introduced the week at this most current year by saying that there are, um, you know, there's something like, uh, I don't know, hun- hundreds of languages spoken by the members of the UN.

Um, but one of the most important languages for them, uh, is open source, uh, the language of open source and open source contribution. Um, and so yeah, I think that... I thought that was a really good way of setting the stage for that week where we were together and for the, uh, for the idea as a whole.

[00:19:14] John: So Tim, obviously, uh, you, um, and a few other folks, uh, including Henry from kind of the Drupal aspect were, were at UN Open Source Week.

I'm wondering what other, what other technologies were, were kind of in the room? What other open source stuff was out there?

[00:19:33] Tim L: Yeah. I mean, there was quite a few. So, um, I was there, um, actually by invitation from the Sovereign Tech Agency. Um, the Sovereign Tech Agency is, was sort of spun off by, um, the UN and in particular by the, uh, German delegation originally to, uh, look up- at creating digital sovereignty, and they've been sponsoring open source folks to go to events like UN Open Source Week.

So there were people from the Python Software Foundation, PyPy. Hmm. Hmm. Um, uh, the Processing Foundation, the Sovereign Tech Agency itself, Drupal of course, um, Open Science Foundation. There were people in robotics. Hmm. Um, there was some interesting things there. There was, um, yeah, just a variety of things.

Some of the names you know, and some that you might not know, like emerging technology stuff, um- Oh ... that's going on. And then a lot of the attendees were also delegates from various countries who were implementing open source- Hmm ... in, in their, um, you know, civic presence.

[00:20:35] John: Interesting.

[00:20:36] Tim S: Is the, um, Open Source Week, is that, um, open to just anyone, or is that, like, uh, invitation only type?

[00:20:46] Henry: You have to... You, you can, you can ask for-

[00:20:52] Nic: Oh, I think we lost Nic

[00:20:53] Henry: And, you know, it's just Lazzo. Yeah.

[00:20:56] John: Henry, you cut out there a little bit, so could you just repeat what you just said?

[00:21:00] Henry: Oh, yes. It's a, you know, they, they put it out and you can, um, you can ask if it's okay to, to go. So it's basically, it's you put in the, uh, re- request, uh, to join.

[00:21:11] John: Hmm.

[00:21:12] Henry: Um, and it's been that way for the last three or four years. It looks like my sound might be out.

[00:21:17] Nic: Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say, I think your, I think your headset is cutting in and out.

[00:21:22] Henry: Oh, interesting. Uh, let me try another one. I'm gonna try just the regular audio.

[00:21:30] Nic: Yeah, we can, we can test that out.

[00:21:32] Henry: How about

[00:21:32] Nic: that?

[00:21:33] Tim L: But, but yeah, like, like Henry said, the, um, you know, there's sort of an application process, uh, request an invitation. Um, and then they've, they've also proactively reached out to a number of

[00:21:47] Nic: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:47] Henry: Is that my audio still out?

[00:21:49] Tim L: No, you're good.

[00:21:50] Nic: Oh, good. You're good. Yeah. Uh, yeah, there's something, there's something coming through, but we can...

If we need to debug that a little more, we can. Um, so Henry, I'm curious what... So there's, uh, I think a different mix of people that go to the UN than a typical industry, um, meeting e- even in the open source space. Can you talk a little bit about what is unique about this type of conference versus, you know, a DrupalCon or some other industry event?

[00:22:21] Henry: Oh, the, the audience is completely different, I would say. Uh, the attendees are, are, are basically policy... a lot of policy people and-

[00:22:30] Nic: Mm.

[00:22:31] Henry: And management leadership. Um, the, this started as OSPOs for Good, i- when it started. They renamed it recently. Um, but it was open source program offices in, uh, two years ago, three years ago.

I, I've been to three of them, the last three. Um, they signed the Global Digital Compact, which is basically a, a global agreement around digital systems, and open source, if you will, is at the center of it. Um, so it's basically the, the entire, the entire global digital community is rallying around free and open source software.

Um, and the, the, but the people that have been there in the past were basically government folks that were in open source program offices. You know, there are not a lot of them, surprisingly, in the US. There's only one official open source program office in the United States, which is at CMS. But Remy was there several years ago.

He's the person that runs that, and, um, and people around the world were there. So it's, it's just a different audience, um, than, than the, you know... This year was a bit different. They broadened it. They added a DPI Day. They added a DPG Day, or open source, like a hackathon. So they basically, they, they, they broadened it a bit to bring in more of the makers, uh, than the, you know, the, the people that are, like, involved in policy and decision-making.

[00:23:58] John: Sorry, D- DPI and DPG?

[00:24:01] Henry: Yeah. D- uh, DPIs, DPI stands for digital public infrastructure.

[00:24:06] John: Oh, okay.

[00:24:06] Henry: Uh, digital public, and DPG stands for digital public goods.

[00:24:10] John: Digital public goods. Got

[00:24:10] Henry: it. And basically, the, th- those distinctions came from, well, there's a co-develop, uh, and some folks out of India, and MOSIP created the, the thing, DPI, uh, kind of terminology, and Google- Mm

and Microsoft jumped on to support it. Um, DPGs came out, I think, Northern Europe, um, and I think the, the term was coined by Niklas Grun in some research that came out 10 years ago. But basically, digital public goods is a, um... It, it's basically the thing that we've been doing in the Drupal community for 20 years.

Like, it's, we've, we've got- Mm ... you know, if you could imagine the, the through line between- Uh, Wikipedia, um, and free software, open source, um, and a lot of the creative commons, you know, basically, uh, open education resources, open knowledge. You could like look at the... There's a, there, there's a, a movement towards open knowledge, open science, and software is kind of the, you know, the, the beachhead of it starting in the '80s.

But it's, uh, it's, it's gone across all these different places. Um, and DPGs is, you know, just cr- it was a term that could say all of it. So open- Yeah ... education resources, open data, open source software- Yeah ... you know, open everything, um, open knowledge. Um, and so, um, they, the... a group came out of the UN, I think it was, may even been Sweden or Finland, uh, that kind of stood up the DPG idea.

Um, and they created a, a partnership with the UN, and then they started, and they built the DPG Alliance, and then they started certifying, you know, organizations, projects, um, that were really aligned with the, the, the sustainable development goals of the UN. Yeah. And they've gotten, uh, hundreds of countries, I think, involved in it, and hundreds of great projects.

Um, a lot of them are software, of course, 'cause we're, we're the farthest ahead, I think, on the, on the front of making things a public good

[00:26:27] Tim S: Yeah. That's, that's really interesting. Um, and so recognizing Drupal as a DPG, um, like how does Drupal fit into the broader conversations beyond just, you know, recognizing it as a public good?

And the conversations at the UN Open Source Week.

[00:26:46] Henry: I would say that the probably... You know, the interesting thing about Drupal is it's not, it's seen, at least in the circles that I've been in, and I'm not really in the... I don't do a lot of the tech conferences anymore. Um, but Drupal is more than attack.

It's basically a whole new, a whole kind of mature ecosystem of, you know, that term co-opetition that I pulled up earlier.

[00:27:16] Nic: Yeah.

[00:27:16] Henry: Which is basically this org- You know, Drupal and Dries started out with something special, which is really the, the governance, the way Dries governed this and grew this community.

And I, we were at the first DrupalCon and, you know, it's 20 some years ago. Um, and I was with Zach, uh, who founded, uh, Deanspace back in the early days, and we looked at different technologies, and Drupal was just, it was, I think it just called Drop. It was- Yeah ... it hadn't been even named. Um, but we started using it for political organizing for political campaigns, and what we found at the, all the Democratic campaigns were using Drupal or wanted to use it.

We were all building the same shit though. It was like we were, we were... And we, but we all had this common purpose. You know, we all wanted, and we all would have supported the other candidates 'cause we just, we, you know, we were, we didn't want Bush to get into office. Um, you know, that is, you know, we were young and, you know, idealistic.

Um, but, you know, what we found at the, it was an O'Reilly conference in San Diego. We found that we were all, like, rebuilding the same damn thing, and we're like, "Well, we kinda like... Why don't we just pull together and create a, you know, some agreements and start to share things across the businesses that we're doing these different, you know, organizations?"

So anyway, it, th- there's a, there's a, a way of the Drupal community evolved- Yeah ... which was more cooperative, and it's, it's, it's not just, you know, it's not just cooperating on your protocols. It's cooperating across the business community. There's a lot of sharing that happened from Drupal camps to, you know...

It's like, and that kind of, I think, a spirit has created thousands of Drupal companies- All generating m- you know, I think there's hundreds of thousands of software developers and a lot of businesses, and those businesses are supporting local economies, not just all being exported to Redmond. You know, it's like the, the jobs are local.

And so there's a huge impact, uh, you know, that the Drupal community has had on economies all around the world, and sovereignty. So right now you've got, you've got this m- global movement towards digital sovereignty. Not really in the US, 'cause we have sovereignty. We can just call Google or Apple or Microsoft and tell them what to do.

But if you're in the, if you're in the International Criminal Court and your systems get shut down, you can't just call, you know, and, and have your systems turned back on. So everybody wants the, everybody wants local, some local tech They don't need local tech. We didn't need local tech. Drupal was built in Europe.

We didn't need it, right? You know, so anyway, so I think what, you know, there's like, there's that, the, the, the... I think Drupal has, Drupal has built a pa- It has patterns there that are worth studying, I think, for the- Yeah ... for the business community, so.

[00:30:31] John: And, and Tim, like, I'd be interested to get your, your point of view.

Like, is, is Drupal going to UN Open Source Week, um, and as an example of like, "Hey, the, the community models, the open source model, the digital public good model, it can work. Drupal is, is- Yeah ... powering governments, universities, corporations, and, like, it, it is working." So, like, is, is Drupal kind of like, and that, that history, that long history Henry talked about, is that, like, being used as a, as a, as a rubric for other, other groups and organizations?

[00:31:10] Tim L: I mean, that's part of it, for sure. So one of the things that we should say, uh, right up front is, like, the United Nations itself is a, is a heavy user of Drupal, right? Almost all of the United Nations- Yeah ... digital properties are Drupal sites. Um, and, uh, United Nat- Again, the organizer of the whole UN Open Source Week is also the person who is in charge of the Dru- Drupal practice at the United Nations.

Um, and, you know, that is, that is because of things like... Well, it's because of everything that Henry said about the fact that this is a cooperative, not a single vendor-backed project.

[00:31:43] John: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:44] Tim L: Um, that it is very international, that it's very strong and multilingual, that it has a ecosystem of, uh, service providers that are focused on, like, the kind of scale and, like, enterprise quality security that you need for government use cases.

All of these things made it a choice and, and like, you know, I, I don't want to discount people who probably did work on this, but it's not like we all collectively went and made the hard sell to the UN and said, "Hey, you all have to adopt Drupal." Like, we didn't wine and dine anybody. We didn't take them out to fancy dinners.

Maybe Henry did. I didn't. Um, and, but they chose to adopt it on the merits, on the merits of the capabilities of the software- Sure ... and of the ability to participate in that ecosystem. And one of the things, like, one of the panels they asked me to give while we were at the event was, in fact, about, um, how we manage our community.

Of, of all the projects that were invited, I think Drupal has the most annual contributors, um, uh, individual contributors. Um, and so managing at that kind of scale was a really, a really big deal. And, um, and it, it was also interesting because we, we heard from, I mentioned a couple times, some of the international delegates.

So we heard from the delegates from Tanzania, Morocco, Poland, I think it was, or, um- Actually Estonia, um- Mm ... and, um, about their implementations of open source. And this is one of the other things that was really important because we, um, especially all of us in the States, like, often think about, uh... We, we, we kind of make this assumption that, that open source has to, or at least in the past, had to win a kind of uphill battle against these large kind of vendor organizations and all these kinds of things.

Mm. But in a lot of the world, it's, it is the clear and obvious first choice for them, um, partly for the financial reasons, partly for the openness, partly because they can run it in sovereign ways on local infrastructure and with local talent. Um, so yeah, I mean, it was, it was really interesting, and we, we had a lot of conversations there about the ethos of what it means to be a digital public good.

And therefore, you know, with these increasing political conversations about what sovereignty means, a diff- the difference between building sovereign tools with bridges versus sovereign tools with borders and locking things down. Mm. And it was a really important part of that conversation. Mm.

[00:34:15] John: So- Yeah ... uh, just to gain some context, this took place at the UN in New York, I'm assuming?

[00:34:22] Tim L: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes, it did.

[00:34:23] John: Okay. And, uh, representation from the United States government there?

[00:34:29] Henry: A little bit.

[00:34:29] John: No. Yes, no, maybe a little bit?

[00:34:31] Henry: No, no. Well- Okay ... uh, you know, I mean, there were some, there were some tech folks there- Sure ... that, that have a responsibility for implementing SHARE IT Act, for example, which is...

You know, the SHARE IT Act is, is, it's, it's odd that people don't really talk about it in the US much. Mm. But it's a, it's, you know, it's an act that was, requires all of these agencies to use open source and share their code.

[00:34:55] John: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:55] Henry: Yeah, yeah. And, um, you know, so there were a number of people there that are, are responsible in helping to set, set that up.

But- Interesting ... you know, mostly international.

[00:35:03] John: Okay.

[00:35:04] Nic: So-

[00:35:04] John: Okay. Sorry, go ahead, Nic. Go

[00:35:06] Nic: ahead, Henry. No, that's fine. So Henry, when, when I go to... I usually only go to local events, and I go for a few reasons. Like, I go to, uh, learn something new, maybe share some knowledge, meet some friends, meet- Yeah ... you know, meet new people.

I'm curious when you're looking at something a little larger scale like this and, uh, when you're going to this event, what are you looking to take away from it? Um, are you just trying to meet people and see what people are thinking? Are you trying to go to panels and get specific contacts? Like, w- w- if somebody's thinking about going to this event, what, what should they expect to take away?

[00:35:50] Henry: Um, it, you know, I think it depends on who goes. It depends on what they want. I mean, I can talk about myself, what I get out of it. Um, but I think everybody has kind of their own, you know, may have their own objectives for it. Um, for me, um, I'm, you know, I'm primarily, I was there looking for, uh, procurement, um, international procurement policy, uh- Mm.

conversations in, in particular. That's interesting. Um, so Civic, my company, Civic Actions, has been doing big Drupal projects for the federal government for a number of years, and before that, 200 NGOs. Yeah. Um, so, um, and a number of years ago, we, we're, we're looking at the, you know, the, the actual management of the contracts was such that it's very difficult to, to make upstream contributions a part of your delivery process, for example.

It's like, you know, but we've always wanted to do that. Like, we always talk to the core module maintainers before we implement anything 'cause we want to support their, you know, the maintenance and the f- longevity of that project. If you don't, if you don't water the roots of the system that you're, you know, trying to depend upon, you'll find that your tree is dead pretty s- quick.

You know, it's like- Yeah ... y- y- you can't fork something and expect it to be a really good thing long term for your, for your clients. So we're looking at, you know, we're looking for, for that when we're... You know, for us, we started working on procurement five, six years ago. A year and a half ago, we won a contract to rewrite the procurement training program for the US federal government.

It's called DITAP- Okay ... and we'll put a link here later. But that DITAP is on GitHub. The entire thing was done in the open from day one. It's, you know, people can make poll requests on it, just like they can on, on Drupal, on any piece of software. But you can actually update the curriculum now to teach the US federal government about modern tech.

That entire thing was an online education resource. It's basically, it's a digital public good. And the, the, the, the, the procurement buyers, um, can see poll requests. They can make them. They can see who's actually done the most work on that curriculum. Yeah. And once they do that, they can then look at the procurement that they're running for tech and say, "Oh, well that company there actually did a lot of work on this infrastructure that we're trying to make a decision to purchase around."

So we're teaching them not by, in a lecture type way. We're basically building, uh, an ecosystem that they can participate in-

[00:38:43] Nic: Yeah ...

[00:38:43] Henry: where they can actually see who to give the contracts to. Because right now they're giving contracts to people that just shovel things over a wall at the end of a term And you can't shovel software and, and throw a license over it after three years of work and expect it to be maintainable.

You can't expect any- Yeah ... other developer to take over that particular code base if it hasn't been done, you know, in a way that's, uh, you know, more cooperative or through co-opetition with other vendors, for example. So-

[00:39:15] John: Yeah ...

[00:39:16] Henry: um, anyway, we're, w- we, we were interested really in changing the federal government, but all that work that we did, we were interested in making sure that we, um, can share that with all the other governments that are also going through procurement reform so that they can make upstream contributions to it, um, and so forth.

[00:39:34] John: Right. So- Interesting ... I, Henry, you and I, you and I had a conversation a couple weeks back and, and, um, you know, you kind of talked about your, your procurement training, um- Mm-hmm ... ac- activities and, and the kind of services you offer there. And, and I thought that was super, super interesting. And, um, you just talked about it a- again here.

Um, I'm wondering, like, i- in, you know, uh, I don't know if everybody's listened to the Driesnote from DrupalCon Rotterdam. Um, we talked about it last week a little bit on our Off the Cuff episode. Um, but, you know, Dries kind of had this, you know... We've talked about getting off the Drupal island for a while.

Dries kind of talked about talking louder about Drupal and all the great things that it does. I'm wondering, like, Henry, are you guys thinking about, like, um, taking kind of this, this procurement officer training and, and bringing it to... I mean, I don't know. I would assume procurement officers have events or conferences that they go to.

And, like, is this something that you guys are looking at to try to, like, get, get Drupal and, and h- educating procurement officers in this way, uh, more, you know, getting in front of them at these conferences?

[00:40:51] Henry: Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, we just, we just showed up at a NCMA, which is the National Contract Management Association.

Mm. It's the largest federal,

[00:41:00] John: uh, procurement conference. See, I

[00:41:00] Henry: knew you... I,

[00:41:01] John: I knew you would know where they're hanging out.

[00:41:03] Henry: Yeah. Well, I mean, this particular one, I mean, it was basically the f- the FAR Council- was there, which is, you know, for those in the federal government, it's really, it's a kind of a geeky, you know, very tight, close community.

And, you know, procurement itself is, you know, it's just, it's really important to, to set the context up front because if people don't set these contracts up, and these are big.

[00:41:30] John: Yeah.

[00:41:30] Henry: Some of these contracts are huge. You know, there's like the State of Colorado's got a several hundred million dollar benefits contract that's coming up for renewal in a few years, and there's a big vendor that has it, that's captured them.

These vendors have captured our governments, state and federal government- Mm-hmm ... and we spend $100 billion a year on tech.

[00:41:50] John: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:50] Henry: The US Federal Government. If you took 10% of that and steered it upstream, you're talking about $10 billion a year.

[00:41:57] John: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:59] Henry: And the, and, you know, $10 billion a year upstream is like 20 times the budget of the Linux Foundation, and they do a lot of impact with the 20, with the, you know, 1/20 of what the federal government could do if only 10% was steered upstream.

So, you know, if you've got some way to, to kind of steer government spending and policies towards making better decisions around who the best vendors are because they actually support the community, we could have a huge impact on our ecosystem. Yeah. And it's not just our ecosystem of Drupal, it's the entire free software movement.

It's the entire open source movement. Right now we've got, we've got a Linux Foundation which has done a lot of great work.

[00:42:39] John: Yeah.

[00:42:39] Henry: For sure. But governments themselves could dwarf it.

[00:42:43] John: Yep.

[00:42:44] Henry: They could dwarf it and, you know. Yeah.

[00:42:45] John: I, I wonder if there's also like... So my, my brain kind of went also into the corporate procurement space, right?

So like- Mm-hmm ... you're, you're absolutely right about government, government procurement, but like corporate procurement, like getting in a room with those folks and kind of educating them to the, to the benefits of, of Drupal and digital public goods and all, all the great open source software that's out there is, is, is something that, you know, I feel like we could provide them with an aha moment, right?

To say like, "Oh, okay, I see why this is probably better than maybe some of the proprietary stuff that I'm, that I'm paying for." Um, so, uh, all in all- Yes ... I think like the getting to the procurement officers is an interesting- Mm-hmm ... interesting idea and, and maybe, maybe necessary.

[00:43:29] Nic: Yeah. I think, I think, I think, uh, we've had this discussion on and off over the last few years, but like in an ideal world we'd have a way to like provide some portion of, uh, value from a project back to the direct projects you're using, and then individual projects would have a way to provide some portion of that upstream.

Like for example, let, let's just say you have a, you know, a million dollar Drupal project. 1% of that goes to the Drupal Association. Maybe the Drupal Association takes, you know, 5% of the... You know, when it's fully funded and everything's great, if projects did that, it would be, right? Then- Yep ... Drupal Association takes some percentage and sends some of that to Symfony, sends some of that to S- well, I'm sure something, something to CKEditor.

You know, maybe Symfony sends some of it to the PHP Foundation, maybe Drupal... You know, if you can start floating that stuff upstream, you look at things like- Curl is used by every single company on the planet

[00:44:31] Tim L: Yep

[00:44:32] Nic: And-

[00:44:32] Tim L: Whether or not the people in the room even know what it is. Yep

[00:44:35] Nic: Yes. And so if, even if every company just gave like, you know, a 10th of a 10th of a 10th of a 10th of a percent, Daniel would be the richest person on the planet, right?

And he'd still be providing more value -

[00:44:48] Tim L: Yeah ...

[00:44:48] Nic: back to the world than what he's making. Um- Yeah ... and, and as we've, we've seen, this is, you know, funding open source has been a, a topic since open source began.

[00:44:59] Tim L: Yeah

[00:45:00] Nic: But the, the burden on maintainers now in the last year, year and a half has increased

[00:45:06] Tim L: Yeah. And there's a-

[00:45:07] Nic: Many, many, many more

[00:45:08] Tim L: there's a few, a few points I'd like to make on this front, because part of the issue has been that open source has existed in a, uh, in a, it's been running ahead of the legal structures that kind of needed to exist to support it properly, right? So in the United States, but also overseas, most open source, if it has a legal entity other than an individual at all, it's usually some kind of nonprofit entity.

And it's very difficult for corporate users, for, uh, government u- for really kind of almost any class of user to pass through money to a charitable organization in a, in sort of a donation type format. One of the really important things, in some cases it's not even, it's not even legal, right? Like they can't legally- Mm-hmm

make a donation, um, to, to a charity. Um, and so one of the, one of the things that is gradually evolving, and I think we're in this sort of sea change moment, this was another topic at Open Source Week. It was a big topic at the, uh, EU Open Source Week as well, is, um, uh, how can we create structures both as those foundations and for those, the, again, on the p- procurement side, that, that legitimize ways to actually provide that kind of financial support.

So can we create things like... That, that's what the Sovereign Tech, uh, Agency is. Like they are an experiment that came from the governmental side to figure out how could we create an entity that can actually work with open source foundations, right? And it was a very, very positive impact and they're, they're looking at creating an EU-wide version of this, of the Sovereign Tech Agency.

Hmm. Um, similarly, there is, right now, there's an EU public procurement act, um, going through the EU, uh, legislative process. Um, uh, there's a, there's a proposal for it. I think the comment period is still open, but either way we've, you know, we've had various folks send some things in and a lot of people in op- in open source foundations have been collaborating on this.

Um, it won't necessarily reach an agreement till the end of 2027, but the idea there is to update their procurement to explicitly include things like contribution requirements or as, as parts of, uh, the procurement process. And because right now their procurement rules are legislatively defined, right?

What Henry's talking about is his training can provide them all the tools they need to understand what they can do within the discretion they're given, but they do have some limits that they have. Um, and so if, if, if they're, if the limit of a particular agency somewhere or of a particular corporate position is we only make a decision on price, or we only make a decision on whatever, like maybe we can still win that, but it doesn't, it doesn't include the, the room for these other things.

So we're talking a lot more about, okay, your, your participation, you as an end user, your participation back to an open source community is not a charitable gift. It is not purely based on, um, you know, just, uh, some sense of, of duty, but it is an investment in digital infrastructure. It's an investment in sovereignty.

Sometimes it can be a direct investment in risk mitigation. So whether that's like, okay, you know, one of the, one of the first areas for, for most of these institutions to start spinning things up relates to security, right? If they can provide some kind of security thing like Drupal Steward is for Drupal, there are similar programs in some other things, where, okay, the Open Source Foundation can provide some kind of concrete value add on top of what they do, then, then that's something that these organizations can write a check for So a lot of the conversation right now is figuring out how do we navigate the legal structures that weren't m- built to do this in order to create systems that would even allow us to, to create these kinds of support mechanisms.

[00:49:00] John: So Tim, before we, before we move on, I wanna, I wanna kinda, um, uh, ask you a different version of the question we asked, we asked Henry. Um, and I'm wondering, you know, obviously I just talked about how we're, you know, always looking to kinda get off the Drupal island. Um, but again, going back to Rotterdam and the Dries note, Dr- uh, Dries also talked about, you know, talking louder a- about Drupal.

Yep. So I'm wondering, you know, uh, you're also in the C-suite, you're a CTO of a, of a open source, uh, association, right?

[00:49:35] Tim L: Yeah.

[00:49:35] John: Um, I'm wondering, uh, like, what, what did you see that kind of like, uh, got you off the Drupal island, uh, at, at UN Open Source Week? Or, um, and/or, um, how did you kinda talk louder about Drupal-

[00:49:52] Tim L: Yeah

[00:49:53] John: in, in that week?

[00:49:53] Tim L: So that's a, that's a really good question, and it's something we need to double down on and I need to flex this muscle. I think a lot of us, you know, the reason that this is hard is just because when there's, within the i- it's a big island. There's a lot there. Yep. There's a lot to do.

There's a lot of manage. There's a lot of people to talk to. Uh, everything moves pretty quick. So it's very easy to stay focused internally on, on what we are. That's actually one of the reasons that just, even just attending the UN Open Source Week is so important for me, and felt, felt so important because while Drupal was a, you know, we got to be a voice in the room.

Um, we got to talk about these things. It's not like it was about us by any stretch of the imagination. We just got to be a, a, a good example among others. So for me, participating in that event was about getting the chance to speak about what we do. Um, it was about... So Tiffany Ferris, um, who's currently our interim CEO at the Drupal Association, was at that event as well, and she gave a, um, a talk specifically about some of these procurement questions, and about thinking of, of these as infrastructure investments, not charitable cases, and all these kinds of things.

Th- there's a great blog post, I think, on the, uh, it's on the Palantir blog, um, which I'll add a link for the show notes, uh, to be shared. But, um, but that, that was a start, right? And this, this event, EU Open Source Week, um, those are very public policy and, and governmentally based things, but they d- they do have this impact on, on wider ecosystems.

And for us, you know, that's what I would like to see continue, is just, you know, us being, just being present at bigger s- spaces. What you said earlier about being present where procurement officers meet is absolutely right. Being present at right now, you know, any of these, like, AI-oriented conferences and things, right?

And just, you know, having a Drupal booth there. Um, and, and we, we would happily work with community members or companies who want to attend as Drupal rather than just as, as a, as a company and, and, and be able to, to represent our community in those spaces. So I think that's really important.

[00:51:59] Tim S: That's great.

Um, yeah, I think that the presence is awesome. Um, I think, you know, one of the things that's really, uh, come into mind as you guys are talking is, like, trust, you know, and this transparency, the governance. It's, it's awesome to hear that that's resonating so well with other countries. Um, and so just to build off that further, like, how can Drupal help organizations, countries, you know, achieve digital sovereignty?

Um, what does that mean in practice, just beyond just choosing the software?

[00:52:34] Henry: I, I would love to just take, on the Dries note and on that. Um, you know, the... So Drupal, Drupal is one piece of a very large movement.

[00:52:46] John: Mm.

[00:52:47] Henry: And it's, you know, how do we get noticed? You know, how did the Drupal... Like, how do we lift our head out of our bubble, right?

Um- I think to look at what we've done, not just is Drupal itself, but, like, what we've done is, it's amazing actually. To have a million people that have signed up with Drupal accounts and have over 100,000, probably a lot more engineers. I'm on calls with California, the, the, the leadership in California IT, and h- uh, all these people are former Drupal developers.

[00:53:24] John: Yeah.

[00:53:25] Henry: I mean, I'm serious. Like, we have a huge, huge community of people. And, you know, like, how do, how do we, how do we pull our head out of it, out of the d- bubble that we're in? I think, you know, um, the one thing, and so Chico's talked with me about this, you know, we talked about this, but Drupal has... There isn't another free software or open source project on the planet that has had the impact that we have descent- in a decentralized business community.

There's not one. Hmm. We have a, we have, we have, like, we have companies. If we look at ourselves as a class, we've got thousands of Drupal firms all over the world, and we serve the largest customers in our markets, and just in my segment, which is government. Every single g- there's 150 governments that depend on Drupal.

The UN depends on Drupal. Like, and we've got, we've got a vendor community that works well together in a way that no other vendor community works. And, you know, if you look at the studies that have come out of Europe in the last year or two, and everyone that's come out, like local economies, why does somebody wanna pay Amazon to build a, a, a center in their city?

'Cause they generate four jobs outside of the one that they put in. Guess what? These, these Drupal organizations that are around the world with 100,000 or I don't know how many employees we've got, hundreds of thousands of employees, they generate four times as many jobs around them. So if you want sovereignty, it's not just technical interoperability It's the capacity.

That's the biggest, it's one of the biggest issues they're trying to deal with in EU right now, and it's the same thing we're dealing with in my hometown. You know, in O- in Oklahoma, it's like, we need jobs. And if you have all the jobs, you know, if you've got the lobbyist in Redmond or the Silicon Valley and they just, and they're loud, they're gonna get the jobs and they're gonna be there, and they're not gonna be local.

So but in anyway, in terms of like, it's like, I think there's a story here, and if we could work together, not, not just on the tech side, we're really great at that, but the business side. The business people in our, in our community and our companies. If we could actually start to like do more of what we do on the tech side, which is sharing, and I've seen a lot of that over the years, the Drupal camps.

There's a lot of companies that supported Drupal camps. Mm. We were the first. We, you know, we financed the first 30 Drupal camps, CivicAction did, 20-some years ago.

[00:56:02] Nic: Oh, wow. I, I didn't actually know that. But I, I, I want to build on something that you said, Henry, too, and, and s- and see what you guys think, too.

'Cause one of the things that's been really rolling around in my mind is that, you know, Drupal has fantastic features, right? We're all, everyone on this call is, is aware of that. You know, we are getting better at providing, um, notes to the world about the things we do well, like access control, translate... I mean, the translation, caching.

There's so many things that Drupal does really well, but that in itself isn't always enough to- No, not at all ... adopt Drupal. And I, I think there's something, you're, you're hinting at it, Henry, but I just want to make it explicit. One of the things that makes Drupal great is it has 20 years track record of maintenance, even in the hard parts, even in security, even in...

Like, we've built those processes, right? You can, you know, nowadays, one of, one of the, um, one of the things we're seeing is people are just cloning open source libraries and be like, "Well, I can, I can clone a license-free version of this and, and put it in my software and not have to worry about the license."

Well, yes, you can, but do you have the budget, ability, capacity to then make sure that it's still secure or provide updates or maintain it? Well, m- maybe I probably not I would expect, I would expect- Yeah ... if you did, you probably would've built it yourself already.

[00:57:39] Henry: Yeah.

[00:57:39] Nic: Um, and, and Drupal has that 20 year...

Like, we have 30 people on the security team or, or whatever it is right now. Right. We have, we, we figured out the process. Like, yes, we need to modify it for, like, it's changing. There are thing, like, the last four months we've had a record-breaking week of security releases. Like- Yeah ... five out of the last six weeks or something, which is causing strain, I think, for the security team and for- Yeah

maintainers and things. That, there's things that we have to solve. Those are industry. Those aren't Drupal specific, those are tech specific. But we have the 20 years of maintenance, we have the track record, we have the community stepping up to provide that value, right? And- Yeah ... and that's something that's hugely valuable for anybody adopting Drupal, right?

[00:58:24] Tim L: One, one of the things that I think people commonly make the mistake of, and I'll tie this back to the digital sovereignty question, is that, like, again, you, you, you sort of said this, Nic, is that it's, they think of, they think of having the code artifact as, like, all there is to it, right? Like, I have the library that does the thing, right?

And, and like you said, an o- adopting open source software is about adopting process and ways of collaboration, and the ability to have influence and control, right? Like, you, uh, when you adopt a proprietary soft- uh, proprietary software, right, you are, you're sort of like you're outsourcing a capability.

You have very little influence except the influence of a purchaser, right? You, you, uh, you don't even really get to consent to changes in the roadmap or any of these kinds of things. Like, you don't usually have much control. You, you have a limited amount of control around where things are warehoused, and you don't know necessarily anything about internal security practices, about what the cost calculus is about, um, you know, uh, how, when they choose to invest in performance or when they choose to invest in, in marketing, when they choose to invest in the core product and features you use or don't, you don't use.

And, like, there are so many different ways in which- The collaborative nature of open source and just the open part, the, the part that's in the name, is so much better suited to, to what people actually need if they want... Again, like if we're, if we're trying to define sovereignty, right, not, not the political definition, but the more general sort of philosophical definition, it, it, it's about having a sense of independence and a sense of control, um, and being empowered to, um, make decisions over whatever domain you're talking about, right?

And you, you, I, I don't e- I don't think there's an argument. Even if you built your software, your proprietary software to be totally resident in a single country, in a single place, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of those things, I don't, I still don't consider that sovereign for the users. The, the users are not...

It, it's, if it's in that proprietary format, it is at best sovereign to the vendor. Um, and- Yeah ... so, you know, the difference here is, is whether you want to have understanding and influence with the, with the project itself, whether you want to have choice in how you deploy it and/or choice in who you work with to implement it.

It's not this, this single vendor choice, to go back to Henry's point about the ecosystem, right? You, you actually have, y- you know, choosing Drupal is not the same as choosing, uh, you know, Amazon or whatever. You have this, this whole, um, ecosystem beyond it that, of, of implementers and, and all of these things.

And, and- Uh, Henry, I'm just gonna emphasize it again, you have that ability to develop that, that talent internally. You can, you can control the people who, who understand how these things work, and, um, you can audit it. All of these things. All of this, you know, public code for the public good, um, kinds of things, and I think these are so essential, and I think we- we've shown it...

We've shown that it's not like, you know, the open source movement isn't about it, isn't fundamentally about the code development process itself either. It's about the governance processes in what, that you use to make that code. Yeah. And those are the things that make it, make it sof- sovereign, um, or make it at least able to be used in a sovereign way.

[01:01:53] Nic: And, and those processes and governance is harder than people think.

[01:01:58] Tim L: Oh, it's the hardest thing in the world. Absolutely.

[01:02:01] Henry: It's like the, the core values behind, you know, behind this community have been there since this community started, and it's the reason that this community what it is. But they're not, they're not...

Even the machines don't... I mean, like machine, artificial intelligence, I mean, mach- You, you, you, we, we turn this into some description in a governance, and you lose what's really there. There's a certain kind of a feeling and an openness in a community. You know, Ava Black talked about it at the UN, uh, for Good a few years ago, the four opens and the four freedoms.

Yeah. There's values behind the scenes, and we, when we turn it into a stream of bits of zeros and ones, we lose sight on actually what's underneath the hood. There are... There are core values and behaviors under the surface.

[01:02:52] Tim L: And-

[01:02:53] Henry: Yeah ...

[01:02:53] Tim L: you know what? I want to make an analogy here, which is that early in, early in open source's adoption, there was this, there was this weird...

There was this perception that was like, "Well, if you're giving it away for free, how can it be worth something?" Right? If the code is free, how can it be worth something? And weirdly enough, the world is contending with that same problem again in the age of AI decompiling, of, of cloning, all, you know, like you, you said, Nic.

It's like, oh, but now if... Now if all the code's free, where did... It's not worth anything anymore, is it? And it's like, well, no, we, we, we've already faced exactly that kind of question in the open source world, uh, where the point is that, yeah, the code itself is, is a commodity. It is, it is, it is the, it is the, um, it's the output, but it's not, like, the source of the value or the source of the process.

It's that, uh, it's that ability to build all these things around it, to be international, to be, uh, decentralized, all of these things. And, um, speaking of those, those freedoms, really quick, I'm g- I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote them. I'm, I'm, I've got... I'm fired up. So, um, we- ... we have a slightly modified... Drupal's open web manifesto has a slightly modified thing that's inspired by the four freedoms, but we use, we use five.

And, um, we say the open web is built on freedom. You don't need permission to learn, build, or advance open web technology. Anyone, anywhere can contribute to making it better. It's defined by decentralization. No single person or entity controls the open web. It thrives on inclusion. Everyone in the world, regardless of background, identity, ability, wealth, or status, has a home on the open web as a user, creator, architect, and innovator.

It requires participation. The open web is a shared resource, and therefore a shared responsibility sustained by choice and collaborative effort. And lastly, it exists for empowerment. It's fueled by the collective qu- quest for information, connection, and progress, and strengthened by every individual's right to choice, privacy, and security.

And I think, I think these are really powerful statements, and I think they, they, they can be applied to the sovereignty question, right? Like, s- sovereignty is not you pay someone to do something for you as long as you still have that money in your wallet, right? Like, that is not freedom. That's not inclusion.

That's not empowerment. That is, that is a, a, a, a sort of financial gatekeeping on, on the tools that we need to, to e- to exist in digital spaces, to have a public square in the digital world, all of these things. So, um, I don't know. I think, I think we are... I think we've been ahead of that curve, and, and we're gradually building the awareness of that model, not just as a software development model, but as a, as a social or political model.

[01:05:39] John: So I wanna, I wanna ask before Tim, Tim gets into our final question here. I wanna, I wanna ask something. Um, I don't know. I, um, I might put, put on my grouchy get off my lawn, uh- Sure ... hat for a second, but, you know, uh, I'm listening to you guys talk. I 100% agree that Drupal and open source software is great.

It's the way to go. It's what everybody should be doing. Um, but we constantly hear of, um, you know, issues with open source funding- Yeah ... issues with open source adoption, um, specifically in, in Drupal. And a lot of what, again, I'll reference Teresa's last keynote, was that the perception isn't that great, right?

I'm wondering, um, at Open Source Week, did you hear anything to, um, hypothesize or solve the, the funding issue or the perception issue or the adoption issue? Were there any talks there that you're like, "Oh, this got me really excited"?

[01:06:48] Tim L: So I'll, I'll reference again the talk that Tiffany gave as a, as a Drupal insider, Tiffany Ferris gave as a Drupal insider about the kind of funding and procurement stuff.

We had... That exact thing was the hallway track, right? So in between- Mm ... and, and some of the main content, but, but also the, the in between all of this, like y- again, I was there with people from Python Software Foundation, PyPy, from, from, uh, Open Science, from OpenStreetMaps, from all of these things. Like, the hallway track conversation was exactly this.

How do we go from, hey, this institution, the, the United Nations itself wanted all of us to be here- Mm ... and recognizes the value, but has never written one of us a check, right? Mm-hmm. And they know that. Like, we had that conversation very frankly with them as well about, like, what is the reason for that?

Why is, why is it that they can recognize this importance, this international collaboration, this international cooperation, but not kind of put the money where the mouth is? And, and like I said, part of it is this new EU Procurement Policy Act. Part of it is these changes in legal structure that we might need to think about as, as how all of these nonprofit foundations work.

And part of it is changing how we talk about it. Ch- talking about it in terms of supporting open source is an investment, it's risk mitigation. It is, um, it is, it is part of your participation, um, in, in maintaining your digital p- digital infrastructure, your digital public infrastructure if, as the case may be.

Um, so that, you know... And, you know, a bunch of software developers aren't great at fundraising. Um, and I think that's... We're, we're sort of early there, but if there is one thing that the... One good thing that the conflict between US tech and the international community has created is it has sudden- suddenly created some will and some more awareness of, okay, sovereignty does mean putting our money where our mouth is.

It does mean making these investments. How do we do that? Who do we even do? Like, who, who, who, who are we talking about when we're investing? When we talk about Daniel and Curl, like who even is that, right? It's the kinds of questions they're starting to actually ask. Um, and so that's a, that's a positive start, but it's, it's still gonna be an uphill battle.

I don't, I don't think that the light switch will just, will just turn on.

[01:09:08] Henry: I'd like to say something real quickly about this, 'cause this is a, this is a thing that I heard for years, which is that, you know, we need more money for the open source communities, and I've been... A Pharaoh project I did 20-some years ago was about it.

[01:09:19] Tim L: Yeah.

[01:09:19] Henry: It was actually about funding, funding. Asking governments to, like, in- spend on upstream contributions, for example, is just the wrong frame It's not ex- expense to do that. Why, why even we think about it, it's like it, it doesn't have anything... It's not expense, it's an investment in lowering costs. It's like it's stupid not to do it.

It's like there's, there are things that we do and the way that we frame things that are just the wrong frame. There's so much money in there if we don't ask for a bag, you know, begging for it.

[01:09:53] Tim L: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think we need to- Mm ... we need to be aggressive about realizing kind of what you said before.

We can, we can accomplish the same thing that the $100 billion of federal spending on- Yeah ... on software is doing now with 10 billion.

[01:10:07] Henry: Like- The biz- So the biz- the people that are having these conversations with the customers, like me, me, my team, we have conversations with the federal government. A lot of business people have conversations.

Like, if one quick, one little example, 10, 15 years ago, Sony came to us. They said, "Hey, we need help upgrading 17 ITN modules for Sony Music's launch, and we've got two months to do it and we can't do it. Can you help?" They, they actually said, "We know you won't work for us 'cause you only work for nonprofits," and we're the...

They said, "We're the evil empire." That's what they said to us. Um, and I said, "Look, well, don't look at us as that way. Why don't we do it this way? 200,000 or $250,000, we'll check everything into drupal.org. You can pull it out of drupal.org. It's not a contract for Sony. It's a contract for every other organization.

We'll manage it for you." And then we went out and contacted 17 module owners, the maintainers. We talked to every one of them and we said, "Hey, can we give you some of this money? Can we bring you in?" We developed, like, we worked on a system in a group. It's coopetition, and that's the way this community works often.

And I think we need to reframe the way we talk to our customers, and we need to distribute this money where it belongs, which is in the hands of the people that know what the hell they're doing and can maintain it. It's like, I think there's some things that the business, we can do in the business community or r- that will solve this problem.

And, and lastly, we're an example of this. The whole world could use it. All the other projects could use this kind of a, a orientation, and Drupal community is the best in the world at it. We've, we're the best

[01:11:53] Tim S: We are. Wow. Thank you so m- like, this is, this is inspiring. So thank you guys so much for going to the UN Open Source Week and, like, and bringing this energy, you know?

Uh, both of you guys talking, it's like I'm really feeling so inspired. It's just, just like- ... it's awesome. Like, two thumbs up. Um, but I guess, uh, yeah, looking ahead, so what opportunities should the Drupal community pursue to try to become more involved in UN initiatives and the, uh, global digital public, uh, infrastructure?

[01:12:29] Tim L: So I'll say a couple things here, and I will, um, I will say that if you can be involved, you know, this is, this is focused on a lot of public sector and, and, and kinda government level stuff, and that's great. If you can, uh, especially if you're an international listener, um, but also even if, if you're in the States, right?

Again, it's called the States. There's a bunch of them. Um, if you can get involved on sort of a local level with some of those things, and with, uh, with talking about policy and, and o- public code for the public good, these kinds of things, that's great. But my bigger message to you is more just get out there.

Have a, have a boff at your next local Drupal camp that says, "What is that industry event," whether it's a government event, whether it's a private sector event, whether it's whatever, that happens possibly in the same venue as your camp or just in the same town, right, that you should, that Drupal should be there, should be at, that should, that, where you should be represented.

And figure out how, as a group, your local community can get there. Um, 'cause it's so important we have these camps to, for our communities, but we have to go where people are, and that's the hardest thing for us. Mm-hmm. So for me, whether it's about public policy and government or whether it's just about your local, um, you know, uh, your local brewer's association or something like that.

Like, find those opportunities to just be present to start with, um, and begin- Mm-hmm ... passing on some of this message

[01:14:01] John: Great. Tim and Henry, thank you for joining us. It's been a, a super enlightening conversation and a pleasure to have both of you.

[01:14:10] Tim L: Thank you so much for having us. Thank you.

[01:14:13] John: Don't forget, you can reach out to us on Drupal Slack in the Talking Drupal channel or email with [email protected].

To promote your Drupal event, sponsor an episode or become a guest, visit talkingdrupal.com and click the buttons in the sidebar. And thank you patrons for supporting Talking Drupal. Your support has kept us talking for 574 episodes. Um, before we go into the closing, one thing, Nic, that you mentioned on, I think it was, I don't know, one of the shows that you were hosting and producing.

You were like, "How do I click the buttons and read the script?" You need the side-by-side, uh, monitor, uh, the windows on your, on your monitor so you can do one and the other

[01:14:58] Nic: No, I, I have... That, that's not the problem. I have four monitors. The problem is when I'm reading I can't see where I'm clicking.

[01:15:05] John: Ah.

Because I'm reading. Oh, well. Okay. Then you just need quick buttons I guess. I don't know. Now listen, what do I, what do I know? Um, all right. Uh, Tim Lehnen. If folks wanted to get ahold of you, how best could they do that?

[01:15:18] Tim L: So I am hestonet, as you can see on the screen from the visual recording everywhere on the internet, and especially on drupal.org.

You can also contact me by email, [email protected].

[01:15:32] John: Henry, what about you?

[01:15:34] Henry: Uh, you can reach me at, uh, [email protected] if you want. That's the shortest one. Um, and also, uh, [email protected] works.

[01:15:48] John: Perfect. Tim Sharp.

[01:15:51] Tim S: Uh, you can find me on Drupal Slack. I'm, uh, tsharp, T-E-A dash sharp, S-H-A-R-P.

Um, or you could find me on LinkedIn. Uh, next week I'm actually gonna be at All Things Open, so if you guys, anyone listening is gonna be there, um, feel free to say hey and connect.

[01:16:12] John: Awesome. And Nic, who is not Tim.

[01:16:16] Nic: You can find me pretty much everywhere @nicxvan, N-I-C-X-V-A-N.

[01:16:21] John: And I'm John Picozzi. You can find me personally at picozzi.com, on socials and drupal.org @johnpicozzi and, uh, you can find out about EPAM at epam.com

[01:16:34] Nic: If you've enjoyed listening, we've enjoyed talking.

See you guys next week.

[01:16:38] John: Thanks a lot everyone