Dries Buytaert

Today is another big day for Drupal as we just released Drupal 8.1.0. Drupal 8.1.0 is an important milestone as it is a departure from the Drupal 7 release schedule where we couldn't add significant new features until Drupal 8. Drupal 8.1.0 balances maintenance with innovation.

On my blog and in presentations, I often talk about the future of Drupal and where we need to innovate. I highlight important developments in the Drupal community, and push my own ideas to disrupt the status quo. People, myself included, like to talk about the shiny innovations, but it is crucial to understand that innovation is only a piece of how we grow Drupal's success. What can't be forgotten is the maintenance, the bug fixing, the work on Drupal.org and our test infrastructure, the documentation writing, the ongoing coordination and the processes that allow us to crank out stable releases.

We often recognize those who help Drupal innovate or introduce novel things, but today, I'd like us to praise those who maintain and improve what already exists and that was innovated years ago. So much of what makes Drupal successful is the "daily upkeep". The seemingly mundane and unglamorous effort that goes into maintaining Drupal has a tremendous impact on the daily life of hundreds of thousands of Drupal developers, millions of Drupal content managers, and billions of people that visit Drupal sites. Without that maintenance, there would be no stability, and without stability, no room for innovation.