Dries Buytaert
Dries Buytaert is a Belgian entrepreneur best known for creating Drupal, an open-source content management system (CMS) launched in 2001, which currently powers around one million websites, including notable platforms for NASA and Twitter. His journey began at the University of Antwerp, where he developed a messaging system for his dormitory, which evolved into Drupal following user feedback and his decision to release it as open-source software. In 2006, he co-founded the Drupal Association to support the community around Drupal, and a year later, he established Acquia, a company that offers products and services to help organizations utilize Drupal effectively.
Buytaert also co-founded Mollom in 2008, a service aimed at filtering website spam and maintaining content quality, though it was discontinued in 2018. He holds a PhD in computer science and engineering and has received multiple accolades for his contributions to technology, including being named CTO of the Year in 2014 by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. Outside of his professional pursuits, Buytaert enjoys photography and spending time outdoors with his family. His influential role in open-source technology and entrepreneurship has made him a significant figure in the tech industry.
Subject Terms
Dries Buytaert
Founder of Drupal
- Born: November 19, 1978
- Birthplace: Wilrijk (now Antwerp), Belgium
Primary Company/Organization: Drupal and Acquia
Introduction
Dries Buytaert created the Drupal open source content management system (CMS) and platform in 2000 while attending university in his native country of Belgium. The system powers approximately 1 million websites across the globe—including such significant and disparate sites as those for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Twitter, and eBay. In 2006, Buytaert cofounded the Drupal Association, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting Drupal. A year later, in 2007, he cofounded Acquia, a for-profit enterprise designed to help companies leverage Drupal's technology, reach, and value through complementary products, services, and support. In 2008, Buytaert cofounded Mollom, a web service that helps sites filter the quality of content contributions and stop website spam. Buytaert holds a PhD in computer science and engineering and has been recognized as a leading technology entrepreneur and innovator.
Early Life
Dries Buytaert is a native of Belgium. He was born in a town called Wilrijk, now part of the city of Antwerp, on November 19, 1978. By the time he was six years old, he was already programming. His first job, however, was not in the computer science realm. While still attending high school, Buytaert joined the workforce as a cook, making hamburgers for a fast-food franchise called Quick. Thankful that his parents had committed to paying for his college tuition, books, and other essential university expenses, Buytaert was able to use his paychecks to purchase technology devices and other items for his entertainment.
Once he became a computer science student at the University of Antwerp, he left the fast-food franchise and joined a start-up Internet service provider named Planet Internet. He managed the company's technical service desk and helped with external sales via telemarketing. This job gave him unlimited high-speed Internet access, and he used his earnings to buy more technology gadgets. Such extensive access was a luxurious perk at the time, and Buytaert took advantage of the opportunity to learn all he could about the Internet.
Life's Work
While wrapping up his final year of studies at the University of Antwerp in 1999, Buytaert began to explore web development using computer-generated imagery, PHP server-side scripting, and the MySQL open source relational database management system. At about the same time, his student dormitory was clamoring for an internal messaging system to help communicate and manage student activities. Buytaert decided to solve the problem by creating a user-friendly message board that he hosted on the university's local area network. Upon his graduation the following year—magna cum laude with a degree in computer science—Buytaert had developed the internal electronic bulletin board system into an external news and discussion site and posted it to the Internet at Drop.org. The site was supposed to be named Dorpje.org (in Dutch, dorpje means “little village”), but Buytaert typed the registration incorrectly and ended up with the name Drop.org.
Buytaert spent the next year experimenting with new features, such as content rating, and new technologies, such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. During that time, Drop.org attracted a great deal of consumer interest. User feedback and suggestions began pouring in. Rather than becoming swamped under the pressure to respond to the vast and growing input, Buytaert decided instead to release the software behind the site as an open source program in order to let users experiment with making their own improvements.
Buytaert officially released Drupal 1.0.0 as open source technology on January 15, 2001. Drupal.org followed a few months later, in April. The site enables users to download the Drupal software free of charge and build their own websites using a simple framework that can be customized with the addition of specific modules.
Within only a few years, Drupal had attracted hundreds of thousands of users throughout the world. Buytaert realized that there was a need to establish an organization that would be responsible for ensuring the continued organic growth of the Drupal framework as its user base grew. Toward that end, he cofounded the nonprofit Drupal Association in 2007, along with longtime Drupal collaborators Dries Knapen and Steven Wittens. The organization handles details associated with Drupal's community web-hosting infrastructure and marketing and promotion efforts.
Those promotional efforts have helped Drupal attract nearly 800,000 contributors in more than two hundred countries. Drupal's soaring success provided Buytaert with cachet in the technology industry, but the software was free and thus his achievement did little to pad his wallet. That changed in 2007, when he and Pingtel founder Jay Batson secured $7 million in venture capital and cofounded Acquia in Boston, Massachusetts. The company provides technical support services and products such as prepackaged software combinations designed to speed and simplify Drupal execution and management in the fast-changing open source environment. Buytaert is the firm's chief technology officer (CTO). He relocated to Boston with his family in 2010 to reduce his transatlantic travel miles and the amount of time spent away from his burgeoning start-up. Acquia experienced rapid growth in its first few years, with some $38 million in venture capital funding and more than two hundred employees as of March 2012.
Another demand on Buytaert's time was Mollom, a web service he developed in 2008 with college friend Benjamin Schrauwen. The service was created on the idea that the credibility of websites powered by open source technology could eventually be diminished without certain controls available to help site publishers evaluate content quality and restrict unwanted content such as spam. Mollom is a web tool designed specifically to meet that need for open source publishers. It was available via Mollom.com and as part of Acquia's site support offerings until it was discontinued in 2018.
In addition to managing his own companies, Buytaert has served as an adviser to the Oregon State University's Open Source Lab, cloud-scale visualization solutions provider Akiban Technologies, and mobile application management services provider Apperian. Buytaert, who received a PhD in computer science and engineering from Ghent University in Belgium in 2008, has also coauthored numerous technology articles for US and European publications and has spoken to audiences at major industry symposia around the world. He was recognized by Business Insider as one of the 50 Most Powerful People in Enterprise Technology in 2012. In 2014, Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council named him CTO of the year.
Personal Life
In 2006, Buytaert married a biotechnology research scientist. The couple has two children, Axl and Stan. Until 2008, Buytaert and his family resided in Antwerp, Belgium. The family moved to Boston in 2010 while Buytaert focused his efforts on Acquia from the company's New England headquarters. In their free time, they enjoy hiking together and visiting parks and zoos. Buytaert likes photography and often brings his camera along.
Buytaert has received numerous awards for his contributions to enterprise technology. Among them are the 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year Award for New England from Ernst and Young, CIO of the Year 2012 by the Boston Business Journal, and 2012 CIO of the Year by Mass High Tech in the Emerging Technology category. He also received the CIOnet Innovation Award in 2009, was named as one of the Top 5 Most Influential People in Open Source by MindTouch in 2009, and was ranked among the top young innovators by both MIT and Businessweek in 2008.
Bibliography
Andrews, Jeremy. “An In-Depth Interview with Dries Buytaert, Drupal Founder.” CMS Wire 11 May 2011. Web. 12 Aug. 2012.
Chavan, Abhijeet. “Migrating to Drupal.” Linux Journal 151 (2006): 60–65. Web. 12 Aug. 2012.
Dearing, George. “Who Was That Masked Dot?” Informationweek 1177 (2008): 24. Web. 12 Aug. 2012.
Druckman, Katherine. “Linuxjournal.Com—under the Hood.” Linux Journal 197 (2010): 14. Web. 12 Aug. 2012.
Hubble, Ann, Deborah A. Murphy, and Susan Chesley Perry. “From Static and Stale to Dynamic and Collaborative: The Drupal Difference.” Information Technology and Libraries 30.4 (2011): 190–97. Web. 12 Aug. 2012.
Shirky, Clay. “Dries Buytaert, 29.” Technology Review 111.5 (2008): 54–55. Web. 12 Aug. 2012.