The expert Drupal agency has asked if we should keep the much-loved version of Drupal

Code Enigma looked into the question of cancelling Drupal 7’s EoL.

Drupal core ideas is a place to submit suggestions and see them through the validation and planning stages. The Drupal Ideas project's purpose is to make Drupal product management choices more visible and explicit. Everyone is welcome to submit and debate ideas, however, the Drupal core product managers are in charge of the ideas project.

Joseph Olstad reignited conversation on an idea from late 2021 where he posed the idea that Drupal 7 End of Life be suspended and the version continues to live on.

Drupal 7 has a much higher adoption rate than Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 combined.

Drupal.org itself still runs on Drupal 7, thus there's a case to be made for community support of Drupal 7 to guarantee Drupal.org gets the best support possible.

There is no reason why Drupal 7 and Drupal 9 or even Drupal 10 cannot co-exist.

Jacques Blier added that Drupal 7 still has the most market share. It should be supported indefinitely until Drupal 7 or below is used by less than 10% of Drupal sites.

“Drupal Classic”

Joseph suggested a rename could differentiate the product. To create a product strategy, identify the strengths of Drupal Classic, and expand on those strengths.

However, opposers took the view that remarketing Drupal 7 as Drupal Classic would undermine Drupal 8 in terms of uptake, as well as confusing users.

Backdrop CMS

Backdrop CMS founder, Nate Lampton, argued that Backdrop fundamentally is “Drupal Classic”. It is still compatible with PHP 5.3, is quicker than Drupal 7, and includes all of its requirements in a single package (which are much fewer). Though is not 100 percent Drupal 7 compatible, which is a significant limitation.

If the goal is otherwise to provide ongoing support for existing Drupal 7 sites, then postponing Drupal 7 EOL would be an excellent reason to do so (or stick with Extended Support).

There doesn't seem to be a definitive answer as to whether Drupal 7 End of Life should be postponed indefinitely. The conversation, however, is certainly interesting.

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