Summary: I was happy to talk with two major contributors to Drupal 8 at the same time at Drupal South 2015 in Melbourne Australia. At the time we recorded our conversation in March 2015, Hussain Abbas from Bangalore, India and Jibran Ijaz from Lahore Pakistan had both contributed well over 100 patches to D8. In this podcast we talk about their history in Drupal, open source software as a force for good in society, the benefits of contribution, Drupal as the 1st project of the PHP-FIG era, Drupal 8 for developers, the incredible energy and size of the Australasian Drupal community, and more. Drupal is helping society Jibran: "As you can see in Drupal South, we have a lot of government-related people here, a GovCMS BoF and session about government and open source. I attended a BoF with universities, about how they have similar problems and how the Drupal community can help them to fix those issues. I think we all have the same goal: to improve Drupal and provide a better solution for them and us. We are definitely improving a lot of communities and governments and states together." Hussain: "We can also say that since the cost of acquisition, the overall cost of entering into any such product for the government as a whole becomes much lesser, the benefit is ultimately driven to the people. Of course, it's a long, uphill battle, especially in countries like India, but it is very necessary. As a Drupal core contributor and Drupal user, I have seen what a solid, good technology base can do in determining the end product." Why Drupal 8? I asked these core contributors what they are most excited about in Drupal 8 and what will bring the greatest benefit to D8 users. Hussain: "The underlying system and its reusability factor. Now that Drupal is no longer an island or we are connecting to other islands, that is something which excites me most. I wrote my own set of PHP components, maybe 10 years back. When I started with Drupal, I realized I didn't need most of them, but there were some which I had to move. But now in the new, modern PHP Renaissance world, we don't have to do that. Composer ... and seeing Drupal adopt it. I was talking with someone about all this and he mentioned that Drupal 8 is probably the first product of PHP-FIG and all the PSRs, the first real application built on all these things. It's great! The fact that Drupal is leading the way reinforces my belief in it since the beginning." Jibran: "I have worked on a lot of components so I have a lot of favorite things in Drupal 8, so I can't pick one, but the main thing I think we have achieved in Drupal 8 is that reusability of the idea. I mean that you have to learn the approach once, then you can apply that approach everywhere in core. You just need to have the knowledge of one thing and you can reuse that knowledge." For example, a plug-in is a plug-in and once you know how to write one, "you can write block plug-ins, and Views plug-ins, and field plug-ins. That's the best thing I can think of from the developer point of view." On the shift from "Not Invented Here" to "Proudly Invented Elsewhere" ... because, as Larry Garfield puts it, "Everybody loves pie!" Guest dossier - Jibran Ijaz Name: Jibran Ijaz Work affiliation: Drupal developer at PreviousNext Drupal.org: jibran GitHub: jibran Twitter: @jibranijaz Google+: Jibran Ijaz LinkedIn: Jibran Ijaz About.me: Jibran Ijaz Guest dossier - Hussain Abbas Name: Hussain Abbas Work affiliation: Technical Architect, Axelerant Drupal.org: hussainweb GitHub: hussainweb Twitter: @hussainweb LinkedIn: Hussain Abbas Blog: Hussain's chronicle Website: http://hussainweb.me/ Facebook: hussainweb.me page Interview video
