DrupalCon Baltimore 2017: Know your friends, pick the right fights.

They say, “Choose your friends wisely, but choose your enemies even more carefully.”

Why would the Product Owner of one of Drupal’s biggest PHP “competitors” in central Europe--Mathias Schreiber, the “Dries” of TYPO3 CMS and the CEO of TYPO3 GmbH in Düsseldorf--be on stage with Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire, Evangelist at Acquia, one of the biggest contributors and commercial entities associated with Drupal?

There are real threats to Drupal out there. Proprietary software vendors and their allies are still trying to take open source software out of the picture by any means necessary: contractual, legal, or regulatory. We will not overcome them if we engage in endless bickering with other open source projects. We need to be pragmatic and build real alliances with our natural allies.

Everyone in Drupal, TYPO3, PHP--everyone in open source software--is relying on each other to do their part, contribute, give back, innovate, enable, and inspire each other. The more time we waste bickering inside our open source cocoon, the faster our real competition will be at our throats.

In our session, we will address:

Threats--some very specific--outside the open source cocoon
How we can address and counter those threats
Remembering to be open minded: "Be open to being open."
How collaboration is more powerful than protectionism
And how we can make the world a better place--together

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