Dear Drupal Association

Dear Drupal Association - you do know that I love you, but i have to get this off my chest. I have been critical, shouted, pleaded,cried, demanded, wished and I once (almost) gave up! I have tried all the ways I could to open up you eyes. Even that i disagree with so many things you do - Im still loving you.

You have done good!

I know all the good you have done for Drupal, that you keep the servers running, have a kickass infrastructure team, a staff that can do all the boring stuff, DrupalCons that are working, scholarships, cultivation grands, bizconnect etc, all that stuff that “just works” without all that we would not even be here - So dont think im just an ungrateful idealist I do see all the good you are doing.
With all this good stuff why do we have a community that's Angered, frustrated and dont feel they you are there for us? Why does it looks more like frustration, when it should be love, kisses & hugs? Is the community just ungrateful, not understanding and demanding fools? What happend the last couple of years, what went wrong between us?

Why is there no love?

South America is running off on their own, fired up by the recent events in Sao Paul - understandable if the tale is true: “DA was spoon feeding their DrupalCon down our throats”
The Europeans feels “The DA is US centric” and theres been talking of forking an European organization & drupalCon alternatives. I guess we all know that its dumb to fork right? (right!?)
What I hear from the US rumour mill, is pretty much the same tale “Fuck em” they are not here for us anyway - unless youre an enterprise suit.
I have no idea what’s going on in Asia/pacific/Australia, but I do hope that its not the same feel over there.
Maybe its just a couple of loud mouthed unreasonable people, and its nothing - then I just wonder why I keep hearing it, out there in the “community”. I wonder dont you know or dont hear it? If you hear it isnt that heartbreaking to you?

14.4 thats not enough bandwidth

I think that you put to much on your broad shoulders. That’s what created the tensions from the community that feels ignored. The workload of creating an organization, moving it from Brussels to Portland, the servers, the legal stuff, the conferences (with all the usual drama) So in the process you forgot all about the shoulders you are standing on: the Drupal Community

I understand you got frustrated by a community that lacked understanding of what you're doing, so the critical voices got ignored, and fails was hidden by “we can't please everybody”, instead of learning by mistakes.

I wonder how your staff in portland are keeping their heads up these days, the postman should bring chocolate for the staff from grateful members, They are working for a frustrated group (as the community seems to be) I am grateful that you found a staff that could take that pressure :)

Dri.. Drupal Heres my axe

Its not easy creating a party where the suits & the tree hugging hippies can dance together, its probably as hard as making that CMS “that sucks less than all the others”.

So what im saying Drupal Association you not that bad! You just forgot the community (ups!) in the process of creating a base of something that can be awesome. If the community & members doesnt matter, then be honest about it! Then I can pass the roses and late night love songs to someone else that cares.

I came for the Code 6 years ago and I stayed for the community (i hated the markup) I hope you have the guts to take a step back and reload, else this will be a bad romance and I really wanna hold hands with you again :)

So what is gonna be?

Love
mortendk