A fictional story of the origin of Drop the dragon.
In the spirit of celebrating 10 years of Backdrop since the first release in 2015 one idea suggested was to invite people to write about the origin of Drop the Dragon with full mythological license. Here is my submission.
How did Drop the Dragon become the mascot of Backdrop CMS?
Who knows exactly where the story begins? When Drupal 7 was released on January 5, 2011 with nearly a thousand contributors, there was a lot of excitement and energy in the open-source community attracting even more doers: individuals, innovators, hobbyists, non-profits and enterprises, building on the interest following the release of Drupal 6 three years earlier.
Among the thousand contributors many names were recognizable throughout the community by their contributions and engagement in the issue queue and on the future directions for Drupal. Two of those contributors, Jen and Nate Lampton, are central to the story of Drop the Dragon, and were recognizable in the issue queues by their effort, ability and acumen. At some time, either before or during this, they became a couple.
As discussions on the future release of Drupal 8 progressed, a variety of ideas were shared by the Drupal community and the lead contributors. Some favored a move towards an object-oriented approach that might appeal more to enterprise users, while others were concerned this could result in a higher bar to entry for individuals to learn to use Drupal and would also leave a large portion of the community behind: individuals and organizations who were accustomed to the procedural approach and preferred to use it alone or in conjunction with object-oriented constructs as needed rather than fully adopting it throughout their efforts.
When Drupal adopted the composer, symphony and objected-oriented approach for Drupal 8 onward, the concerns did not evaporate. The concerns continued to nag some people and they wondered if there was a need to preserve the previous approach used in Drupal 7, for the growing community and newcomers?
While continuing to be active with modern Drupal efforts and uses, Jen and Nate and others felt the concerns were important enough to consider a fork of Drupal 7 and began to also work on it; with a vision to make things easier, keep it simple, and not leave others behind. Among them, Mike McCaffrey suggested the name Backdrop: like on a film set, the background to build your website; plus the word "drop" showed respect to its origin in Drupal; and someone suggested the tagline, "Put your content center stage".
In late 2014, through the autumn and winter, a dozen or so contributors including Jen and Nate were working towards a release of Backdrop CMS for January 15, 2015. The same year that Drupal 8 would debut in November 2015, setting the course for modern Drupal.
As the winter days grew shorter Jen and Nate, like puzzle masters of development, would spend their evenings together with their cat and dog and was there also a bird? Jen and Nate would rattle away on keyboards programming, solving issues and building CMS web sites.
As the year was nearing it's end, seasonal festivities and friends intermingled with the times for their puzzle mastery, enjoying the spirit of the endeavor, to keep it simple to use and not leave others behind.
One evening, typical of many, they were together with the glow of a fire and colored lights and the full moon light shining in through the window. Jen and Nate were busy tapping on keyboards and the pets were lazing around. One of them said to the other, "Can we just 'Drag and drop' this over there?" They put their heads together to figure out how. There was a moment when they both paused having seen a large shadow on the wall coming from the moonlight of the window behind them. They had never seen the cat's shadow towering on the wall like this. They both turned to the window to see what the cat was doing. Surprisingly, nothing. It was just lying curled up on the window sill, not stretching or doing anything. As it saw them both looking, it lifted its head. They turned back to look at where the shadow was and it was gone. Hmm.
Over the next few weeks, as everyone worked on getting the first release of Backdrop CMS ready for January 2015, Jen and Nate had many cosy evenings of development with the fire burning, soft and colored lights, and the pets relaxing. But, strange things were happening. They both noticed things were different. Sometimes it was the shadow of the couch near the corner that looked different, as though the shadow of the couch had a bulge. Was it different or maybe they had turned too quickly, affecting their vision?
The cat and dog were good companions. One evening, they were lying on the floor beside each other, curled up with heads facing the other. Strangely, behind them, the shadow on the wall seemed much larger, bulging higher in the middle and larger than either of them. The bird was close, but not too near, on the clothes tree also looking and watching alertly.
As the release date of January 15, 2015 was approaching, Jen and Nate and others were preparing mock-ups of the installed Backdrop CMS web page and had printed a copy to look at for a different perspective. They left the ink printed sheet on the table for a few minutes. When they came back they were surprised, there was a big smudge in the footer on the left. How did that happen? Like a Rorschach inkblot, the shape seemed almost discernible. What was it? For Marc Bovino it was obvious and he showed everyone: a dragon lying comfortably with its head up, as if it had dragged and dropped itself there, the Dragon Drop.
Over the following decade there have been signs that there is more to the legend of Drop the Dragon.
Some of the friends that used to stop by and visit Jen and Nate to share their progress with Backdrop CMS and some light conversation, sometimes heard of the strange sightings of shadows on the wall. Later, some of their friends told of having had strange shadows flying over their cars and inside their homes. It seemed to happen when you'd least expect it, when immersed deep in using Backdrop CMS or trying to improve an issue, with the spirit of making it simple, feeling a part of the community and not worrying about being left behind.
Note: This is a fictional story. For the real details see https://backdropcms.org/press-kit and share your comments at https://forum.backdropcms.org/forum/legend-drop-dragon-fictional-story.