The Drupal 7 code freeze triggered a lot of retrospective about Drupal core, and the Drupal core development model. Some of these discussions are collectively referred to as "smallcore".

While I'd prefer to postpone such a retrospective until after Drupal 7 is released and we're about to open up the Drupal 8 development branch, the discussion is already beginning on the web, and it is my responsibility to internalize people's thoughts and recommendations.

I've brainstormed about this a lot the last couple of weeks, and talked about it with various people. In this post, I propose 8 steps to help improve Drupal core development going forward. Some of these steps make Drupal better for end-users, some of these steps make Drupal better for developers, and other steps focus on making Drupal a better product. They might not address every concern that has been raised, but I hope they make for a good start and that they provide some focus.

We'll obviously have more thinking and brainstorming to do about Drupal 8. I'd like to thank everyone for their suggestions, for bearing with some of the growing pains, and for helping us raise our game. It is what makes Drupal so great.