Dries Buytaert introduced the Starshot initiative at Drupalcon Portland 2024. The idea was to create a product for less technical users, one that could be installed and updated without using the command line, that would have the best content creation tools pre-installed and configured, and that could be customized without writing code.
One of Dries’s slides was a wireframe of the proposed drupal.org home page. On the right was Drupal core with a Learn more button. On the left was Drupal CMS with a Launch button and a Download button. As soon as I saw the launch button, I thought of the launch buttons I had been planning with Salim. Those launch buttons were on hold until I found a project to support, and built a Drupal distribution for it. I immediately pledged to support the Starshot initiative with the launch button business model.
I called Salim that night to see if we could dust off our plan. We would use the Starshot product for our first launch button. The launch button would support ongoing maintenance of and improvements to the Starshot product.
Salim was all for it if Dries was OK with it. He reminded me that Dries’s company, Acquia, had shut down Drupal Gardens, which was very similar to the launch button we were planning. With our plan, there could be a thousand different launch buttons. Salim asked me to explain our plan to Dries and make sure Dries would be in favor of a thousand Drupal Gardens.
I caught up with Dries the next day and explained our plan while he was walking between meetings. Dries assured me that he approved of our plan. He thanked me for checking with him and said, “Let a thousand flowers bloom.”
I set up a contribution table at the conference for volunteers to work on the project. Erin Rasmussen, Keegan Rankin, and Luke McCormick joined me. Over the next few days, we created a project page and a task list. Salim and his team at DevPanel set up drupalforge.org to host launch buttons.
We soon had a working prototype of a launch button. Because the Starshot product was a work in progress, this launch button was focused on developers. The Starshot prototype spun up the same way it would in a local development environment. It came with an on-line editor for making live changes to the site. Sites were paused after six hour trial period. To support work on the Starshot prototype, we allowed developers to extend the trial period an unlimited number of times.