You have also spoken about how Community is more important than software. Can you elaborate on this?

The community is really what makes the Drupal project tick.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the Drupal community that continue to improve the software on a daily basis. We're innovating non-stop: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in all parts of the world. As a result, Drupal continues to get better, and often at a much faster pace than many of Drupal's proprietary counterparts.

Every day, I get to work with many really smart and passionate people, and the quality of that community directly impacts the quality of the software that we produce. Not only do we do a lot of work, we actually do a lot of great work. It goes without saying that without the Drupal community, Drupal would not be where it is today. It would simply cease to exist.

Can the community aspect also be a challenge or difficulty at times?

Yes. Working on software provides technical challenges. As programmers and engineers, we're trained to solve technical problems. Working with an international team of contributors that are distributed all over the world (different cultures, different religions) introduces social challenges. Sometimes these are much harder to solve than the technical challenges. Solving the social challenges can be equally interesting though.

Even though you were the founder of Drupal you have often said that it makes you uncomfortable being seen as a leader. What do you see yourself as and why?

All of a sudden there are hundreds of people contributing to Drupal, building and relying on that foundation, and hundreds of thousands of people downloading it. I never expected Drupal to grow this big.

Although I'm comfortable in my role as Drupal project lead, I don't necessarily see myself as being a leader, nor did I choose to be one. In many ways, I am an accidental leader.

You are a PhD student at the University of Ghent, with the Parallel Information Systems Group. The core theme of your research is runtime code generation, profiling and instrumentation. Does the work you are doing for your PhD crossover with the Drupal project?

From a technical point of view, my PhD research has nothing to do with Drupal, and I do not use Drupal as part of my research. Of course, a good academic background is a useful asset generally and also when working on Drupal.