Dries, the "Linus Torvalds" of Drupal, was in town for OOPSLA and we took advantage of this to organize some Drupal related events (including a dinner) with him and the CivicSpace (which is built on Drupal) guys. The Drupal community is growing rapidly and a big reason for Drupal's rise in popularity. And most of the credit goes to Dries. Not only is he a smart coder, he is also a a savvy community builder and like most open source software, the community around it is probably just as valuable as the software.
Original publication
This post was originally published on October 30, 2004 on The Standard, the Raincity Studios blog, credited to “Roland Tanglao”. This post reflects the context and tools of its time; some links and services mentioned no longer exist.