Rejuvenate D7, a need for more time spent committing and RTBCing Drupal 7 issues

Actions speak louder than words, and as you can see, I have a lot to say about this. Drupal 7 matters, I'm only impatient because I think we need to sieze this opportunity before it slips away. What is the opportunity? It's a massive Drupal install base. The longer people use Drupal the more likely they'll be to continue using Drupal and that goes for all versions. People still running Drupal 6 in a successful way are more likely going to upgrade to Drupal 9 than someone using Joomla for example. I have nothing against Joomla, however I do have many years invested in Drupal so I'd like to continue to see Drupal bring so much success as it has. Preemptively starving D7 core through neglect is in my opinion a very poor strategy for the longevity of Drupal as a whole. I don't like to cite Microsoft as an example however they have had amazing success. There's a saying in Microsoft that they used to illustrate the importance of compatibility and adopting new releases. At Microsoft they say 'We eat our own dog food'. What does this mean? At Microsoft before they release anything to the public they use it internally and upgrade internally everything to the new version before it gets published as a full release. Now I think in our case it would be very difficult to do that for Drupal.org. Drupal has had a lot of success flipping that model upside down, now I think times have changed, I see a longer term approach is needed. People have massive amounts of time and money invested in their Drupal websites. I've personally seen clients invest litterally millions of dollars of contractor developer time and full time employee time to develop and maintain and pursue their digital experience with Drupal. Budgets in the millions of dollars take years to procure and justify. It might take even longer to justify an equal reinvestment. Instead, what I see clients is doing both versions at the same time. This is not one versus the other, we need to think of everyone as equal and allow them in their own time and budget to decide what they want to do. It is not up to us to decide how our clients are to invest their resources. Yes there are compelling arguments for many types of expenditures. What I see as most important is retaining our loyal following. Serving the community, growing the community and listenning to the community. Fostering trust, fostering enthusiasm and energy. Providing value. In my opinion, the easiest way to provide value is to move forward with what I am proposing, to expand the Drupal 7 core maintainer team and to re-invigorate Drupal 7 in a way that we haven't seen since the days of David Rothstein.

FabianX is back and McDruid seems to be the chosen one. Let's see what they can do.

It sounds like FabianX and McDruid could build the team that we need to move issues forward in a timely manner. Otherwise we risk fragmentation. We are stronger as a whole than individually. With that said, fragmentation is a real risk and I hope that it doesn't come to that. Drupal.org has been good to us all, let's keep the momentum going and focus on having more great success! Delay the EOL of D7, progress things forward organically, this is what I am projecting.

Thanks,
Joseph Olstad