Support for Drupal 7 is ending on 5 January 2025—it’s time to migrate to Drupal 10! Learn about the many benefits of Drupal 10 and find migration tools in our resource center.Recently a module called "Contribute" made its appearance, and with it, a huge discussion has risen, mainly because it is now a dependency of the famous Webform module.
In the aforementioned discussion, it became clear (very clear some might say), that most developers do like the idea of contribute and it would be a good idea for inclusion in Drupal Core. What most people object to is to make "contribute" module a dependency of other modules, which kind of makes sense.
My suggestion and I hope that people will back me on that, is to include contribute in Core and even install it in the standard installation profile.
This way it is highly probably some people will join the community and get more active in it, like the author and maintainer of the module intend, while we will avoid issues where more and more project add a dependency that it not really a dependency.
Problem/Motivation
Everyone's first and most significant impression of Drupal begins when they first install Drupal using the standard or the demo installation profile. Within Drupal (the software) there is no mention of Open Source, core and project contributors, the Drupal Association, and how to get involved in the Drupal community.
To build a growing and sustainable ecosystem, we should encourage participation and acknowledge contributions within Drupal (the software).
We need to discuss and decide…
- Should encouraging participation and acknowledging contributions be added to Drupal core?
- What should the overall message and user engagement be with in Drupal core?
- What is the best approach implement this type of messaging in Drupal core?
Proposed resolution
TBD
Remaining tasks
- Get people's opinion in the below comments
- Determine who are the key and final decisions makers for this type of improvement/feature
- See what other Open Source projects are doing? WordPress, Joomla, etc…
- Decide on an MVP (Minimum viable product) and long term solution.
- Decide how or who is going to lead the messaging?
- Determine the level of effort needed to complete these tasks.
- Decide if initial development/prototyping can be done using the Contribute module.
User interface changes
There are few possible opportunities where this type of message could/should be integrated.
- During the installation process.
- Immediately after the site is installed and a user is redirect to the front page.
- On the 'Status Report'
- On the 'Extend' page'
- Dedicated page (linked from admin toolbar)
Notes
- The Contribute module could be used to quickly prototype the overall message and approach.
API changes
- There might need to be some update to Drupal.org's APIs
- Messaging could be handled via a dedicated core module.
Data model changes
- User data from Drupal.org needs to be enhanced.
- Composer.json files could be updated to include extra data about project's status and maintainers.
Related Issues/Discussions
- #2936020: Add Contribute module as a dependency
- #2282537: Create a mechanism for modules to announce funding campaigns through the Update module
- #2138397: Highlight Flattr, Paypal or Whatever Opportunities on Issue Pages
- #2138411: Highlight Gratipay, Flattr, Paypal or Whatever Opportunities on Documentation Pages
References
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #12 | Screenshot.png | 14.96 KB | Alan D. |
Comments
Comment #2
cilefen CreditAttribution: cilefen as a volunteer commentedComment #3
jrockowitz CreditAttribution: jrockowitz as a volunteer and at The Big Blue House commentedI updated the issue summary to include my initial notes and restructured the ticket to use the standard issue template (i.e Problem/motivation, proposed resolution, remaining tasks, etc...)
Anyone should feel free to make additional edits and improvements to the issue summary, especially if they can help the overall discussion.
Comment #4
dsnopekGlad to see this issue get started! This is great idea - thanks to @jrockowitz for leading the charge :-)
Comment #5
rachel_norfolkThere are indeed a lot of things still to consider but I think this is a great idea. I’d love to see something like contribute in core.
Comment #6
jrockowitz CreditAttribution: jrockowitz as a volunteer and at The Big Blue House commentedThe Contribute module is just some code that is trying to "encourage participation, acknowledge contributions, and improve sustainability within Drupal (the software)". Some people reasonably have issues with #2936020: Add Contribute module as a dependency and I think a more accurate issue title and discussion topic is "Encourage participation, acknowledge contributions, and improve sustainability within Drupal (the software)"
Comment #7
David_Rothstein CreditAttribution: David_Rothstein as a volunteer commentedThis issue looks similar to #2940739: Project messaging channel in core initiative.
Comment #8
alexpottRelated to acknowledging contributions is #2945263: Add symfony/thanks to Drupal which allows Drupal projects to acknowledge and thank (in the form of github stars) the PHP projects we stand on the shoulders of.
Comment #9
C-LogemannI like the idea to also raise awareness about the open source code which we are using especially to run the Drupal 8 core. Additionally to the "composer thanks" which is only visible and usable for developers/maintainers it would be a good idea to also add this information to Drupal backend information about contribution which is discussed here. But this also extends the many important information we might need on a good place like the status page as the contribute module suggests. Maybe it would be better to only create an information block to raise awareness for a special "contribution landing page" on drupal.org where all the important possibilities to contribute can be collected. This landing page is also something we can link from everywhere especially on d.o frontpage. Maybe we can also use this as link target on the standard "Powered by Drupal" block.
Comment #10
Alan D. CreditAttribution: Alan D. commentedQuick feedback on the Contribution modules approach to this.
I like the Contributions block message. A slightly less wordy version of this built into the General System Info / Drupal version area could work nicely, incorporating the member & donate links from the Assoc block. Unsold or even slightly irritated by the rest to be honest.
Most open source application projects tend to have contribute & donate type information in their About page, it's something the Drupal doesn't have; unsure if other CMS's do this? This is what I actually through the Drupal 8 icon was before clicking it for the very first time :P
On a side note, aggregation Drupal profile (personal or company) information onto third party sites seems like a fairly grey area to me. Content added by users is considered to be under CC BY-SA 2.0 unless stated otherwise, i.e. needing attribution; and that's assuming they haven't provided other terms of usage.
Comment #11
jrockowitz CreditAttribution: jrockowitz as a volunteer and at The Big Blue House commentedHi, I am trying to jump start this idea by proposing that we focus on creating an 'About Drupal' section.
Please see my comments here.
Comment #12
Alan D. CreditAttribution: Alan D. commentedIn case people didn't get the icon bit in my comment above, this is from the Admin Toolbar module.
KIS approach.
Benefits is that this information is decoupled from static instances / code, content is maintainable via web admins rather than part of core. Higher visibility (to admins).
We use this on all D8 sites, so I actually figured it was already part of core albeit it just links to the front page