If you're already a Drupal user you know the latest and greatest news. If not, here's the scoop - the latest major version of Drupal has been released with major reworks and updates across the board: Drupal 8.0.0.

Happy Drupal 8 Day! It has been a long time coming, and we couldn't be more excited to step into this next phase of Drupal development. There's no doubt it will usher in a new era of digital experiences, and we can't wait to see how it all unfolds.

Dries discussed what the release of Drupal 8.0.0 means for the community, and you can read his full post here. We also caught him traipsing through the streets of Belgium wearing a sombrero... for your viewing pleasure!

The post includes a video of the interview with Dries. The linked post also describes the updates and "transformation' Drupal has gone through in this latest release.

On the Zend Developer Zone Cal Evans has posted some encouragement about sharing your own thoughts about the post from Dried Buytaert about the future of PHP and Drupal.

As Dries says in his blog:

It seems that we have arrived at a point in which there is a symbiotic relationship between PHP and the most popular PHP applications. A relationship that did not exist when PHP was created. Symbiotic relationships are obligatory: we depend entirely on each other for survival. And yet, I feel like we've been living apart. It makes sense for us (i.e, application developers) to contribute to the development of PHP, and for the PHP core developers to work more closely with the developers of the most popular PHP applications.

He points out that, in Acquia's case, there's just not enough time for the group to contribute back to the PHP project. Other posts surrounding this same discussion have also noted that there's not a good mechanism for people to "give back" to the PHP project and that getting involved requires a certain skillset that lots of developers don't have.