For most of Drupal's history, there have been occasional opportunities to get paid for some contributions to core. But in the last couple years, we've seen significant growth in the number of individuals working on core as their primary job and in the number of companies employing those individuals. We also now have the Drupal Association providing grants for some of the critical work on core. I think this is a wonderful result of Drupal's commercial success and importance, and it has enabled some improvements that would have been nearly impossible to accomplish otherwise, but it also brings with it concerns about fairness, power imbalances, volunteer morale and motivation, and more.


This core conversation will be an opportunity for us to discuss these issues. In addition to myself, it will include a panel (Kalpana Goel, Cathy Theys, and others) who can share our experiences about doing both unfunded and funded work on core as well as helping to fund others. But most importantly, the conversation will include YOU, since all of us have an important perspective to contribute to the culture we create as our project and community grows.