Drupal 7 to be released Q4 2009, plenty of time to contribute

One of my first new year's readings was Dries' reflection post on 2008 which includes predictions for 2009. One of the predictions is that he sees Drupal 7 to be released in the last quarter of 2009. He predicts pain but a strong outcome.

I predict that Drupal 7 will be released in the fourth quarter of 2009. The two most exciting features in Drupal 7 core will be custom content types and radical improvements in usability. To reduce the risk of important modules falling behind in support or update path, a significant portion of the Content Construction Kit (CCK) related modules will move to core and we'll pave the way for the Views modules. The same holds true for other important contributed modules, including token module, path auto module, and image handling functionality. In 2009, core becomes bigger, not smaller. The Drupal 7 code freeze will be longer than expected regardless our new continuous test framework, and the upgrade path to Drupal 7 will be more painful than hoped for. But like always, we'll come out stronger than before...

Two key takeaways to spread from my mind are that:

• You should seriously move to Drupal 6 instead of staying on older versions, in anticipation of a new major Drupal release around the corner. The key modules are already out, and they are amazingly more useful then their Drupal 5 or earlier counterparts. The action happens in the contributed modules area!
• The doors for your work on Drupal 7 are wide open! You should not hold back big ideas on the grounds of a shortly coming Drupal 7 release. We still have time to design and discuss bigger changes. No wonder the fields in core effort needs time to stabilize and achieve "CCK in core" on higher levels that we anticipated before.

Happy upgrading Drupal 5 sites, working on Drupal 6 modules and contributing to Drupal 7 core in 2009!