Noble Friends and Free Software Communities

In yoga and meditation communities, there’s a concept called kalyāna-mittatā, or noble friendship. The Buddha considered it so important that he called it the entirety of the path. Noble friends don’t just make you comfortable. They help you grow through their example, honesty, and willingness to keep showing up.

I’ve been contributing to Drupal since 2010. Over the years I’ve held several of the roles listed in the contributor guide: maintainer, initiative coordinator, meetup organizer, documentation writer, etc. But the role that has shaped me most isn’t on the list.

Friend.

What Noble Friendship Looks Like

The Drupal community is full of noble friends. Let me offer a few examples.

Randy Fay has worked on DDEV for years, whether he was paid to or not. When the company behind it lost its funding, he kept maintaining the project without interruption. Now he sits on the board of the nonprofit DDEV Foundation. And he still answers support questions from strangers with a patience that would impress a forest monk.

At BADCamp one year, Jennifer Hodgdon and I sat down to write documentation for the configuration system. But she might not remember that, because she has over 1000 edits to Drupal documentation. I’ve watched people like Jennifer and Joe Shindelar show up again and again over the years for the thankless job of documenting Drupal with a thoroughness most people would never sustain.

I worked with Alex Pott on the configuration system for years. He is one of the most prolific contributors in Drupal’s history, across nearly every subsystem. He rarely wants the spotlight or to give talks at DrupalCon, but whenever I gave mine, he, along with another dedicated core committer, xjm, reviewed my slides thoroughly.

This list of people feels embarrassingly small. I could go on and on with stories about all of the dedicated people in the Drupal community I admire. I could add all of the Aaron Winborn winners. My Drupal.org profile lists more people who have mentored me over the years, and even that list is incomplete.

The Drupal community has spent years building a credit system to track contributions, and it keeps getting better. I’ve been part of many of those conversations. The system now captures code, documentation, event organizing, mentoring, and more. It helps us understand who contributes, who sponsors contributions, and how healthy the project is.

But no credit system will ever capture what noble friendship gives you. It won’t track the conversation that helped you see a problem differently. It won’t log the patience someone showed you when your patch needed a fifteenth revision or the encouraging message that kept you contributing during a period when you wanted to quit. The credit system measures activity. Noble friendship shapes character.

Three Qualities Worth Practicing

The people I tend to admire most in the Drupal community and in meditation halls share three qualities. In free software and open source communities, they’re what separates a contributor from a noble friend.

1. They give without keeping score. In Drupal, they might review someone’s patch or merge request repeatedly until it gets merged, write documentation nobody asked for, or help a first-time contributor through the issue queue. This is right action: choosing to do what helps, even when nobody is watching.
2. They tell the truth with kindness. A good code review doesn’t just say “this is wrong.” It explains why and offers suggestions. The best Drupal contributors I know can say hard things without making people feel shame. This is right speech: true, helpful, timely, and spoken with good will.
3. They keep showing up. Open source contribution can often feel thankless. Releases get delayed. Issues get closed or sit for months or years. Noble friends don’t disappear when the work gets boring. They stay because the practice itself matters, not just the outcome. This is right effort: sustained and balanced, without burning out and without giving up. Any meditator who has sat through a week-long silent retreat knows this feeling.

Find Your Noble Friends

The Drupal contributor guide helps people find their role. Those labels give us a great way to recognize different kinds of contributions. But alongside whatever role you choose, pay attention to the people around you. Notice who makes you more patient, more generous, more honest. Those are your noble friends, and they might matter more than any role you’ll ever hold.

If you haven’t told them, tell them. A message in chat, a comment on an issue, a conversation in the hallway at DrupalCon. Gratitude is a practice, and it gets stronger when you use it.

I’ll be at DrupalCon Chicago this week. Come say Hi.