Dries Buytaert

Creating and learning is what makes me happy; optimizing for impact is what gives me purpose.

I like creating things; blog posts, websites, companies, photos, and more. I love learning and try to read at least one hour a day.

So far I spent my entire professional career in Open Source. Open Source is superior in many ways, including its ability to optimize for impact.

I believe in giving back and sharing. Not only through Open Source or my blog, but also by investing in startups, investing in people, and more.

I love to travel and usually fly over 250,000 km (155,000 miles) a year. On my travels, I enjoy great food and meeting people.

I believe in protecting and promoting the Open Web. I built my site using Drupal and try to follow the principles of POSSE.

• Co-founder, CTO and Member of the Board, Acquia
  2007 - current
  In 2007 I co-founded Acquia. Acquia helps enterprises build digital experiences using Drupal. We raised over $180 million. The first 8 years of Acquia, we were one of the fastest growing startups in the United States. In 2019, Vista bought a majority stake in Acquia. Today, Acquia has over $250 million in annual revenue and over 1,000 employees.
• Co-founder and CEO of Mollom (acquired by Acquia in 2012)
  2008 - 2012
  Mollom is an intelligent content moderation platform for user-generated content on websites. Mollom uses machine learning to identify spam, profanity or generally unwanted content in comment systems and online discussion forums. Mollom has blocked over 15 billion spam comments across 60,000 websites. We bootstrapped Mollom with no external capital and sold Mollom to Acquia after 4.5 years.
• Co-founder and Board Member of the Drupal Association
  2006 - current
  The Drupal Association is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting and advancing Drupal. The Drupal Association has around 20 full-time employees. Between 2006 and 2017, I was the Chairman and President. Today, I'm a Board Member and a Member of the Executive Committee.
• Founder and Project Lead of Drupal
  2000 - current
  I founded Drupal in 2000, and have been working on Drupal for more than 20 years. Drupal is Open Source software for building websites and digital experiences. Two percent of the world's websites use Drupal. It's one of the largest and most active Open Source projects in the world.

• PhD in Computer Science and Engineering
  University of Ghent, Belgium
  2003 - 2008
  My PhD thesis was titled Profiling Techniques for Performance Analysis and Optimization of Java Applications. James Gosling, the inventor of Java, was part of my PhD defense committee.
• Licentiate Computer Science (Master of Science)
  University of Antwerp, Belgium
  1996 - 2000
  Grade: magna cum laude (with great distinction)
  Thesis: Java AWT for embedded systems

You can mail me at dries@buytaert.net (personal) or dries@acquia.com (work).

The selected awards that I'm most proud of:

• ACM SIGPLAN award for the most influential paper published 10 years ago at OOPSLA 2007
• 2015 ILC Immigrant Entrepreneur of the Year in High-Tech
• CTO of the Year 2014 by Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC)
• DataNews' Belgian ICT Personality of the Year 2014
• Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum 2013
• 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year award from Ernst & Young for New England
• CIO of the Year 2012 in the Emerging Technology category, Boston Business Journal and Mass High Tech
• BusinessWeek Young Entrepreneurs of Tech 2008, top 30-and-under innovators for 2008
• MIT TR 35 Young Innovator 2008
• CIOnet Innovation Award 2009
• University of Antwerp Alumnus of the Year 2010

• Java Performance Evaluation through Rigorous Replay Compilation, Andy Georges, Lieven Eeckhout and Dries Buytaert. In proceedings of the ACM conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (OOPSLA '08), Nashville, USA, October 2008.
• Using HPM-sampling to drive dynamic compilation, Dries Buytaert, Andy Georges, Michael Hind, Matthew Arnold, Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere. In proceedings of the ACM conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (OOPSLA '07), Montreal, Canada, October 2007.
• Statistically rigorous Java performance evaluation, Andy Georges, Dries Buytaert and Lieven Eeckhout. In proceedings of the ACM conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (OOPSLA '07), Montreal, Canada, October 2007.
• Javana: a system for building customized Java program analysis tools, Jonas Maebe, Dries Buytaert, Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere. In proceedings of the ACM conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (OOPSLA '06), Portland, USA, October 2006.
• Building Java Program analysis tools using Javana, Dries Buytaert, Jonas Maebe, Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere. In proceedings of the ACM conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (OOPSLA '06 companion), Portland, USA, October 2006.
• GCH: Hints for Triggering Garbage Collections, Dries Buytaert, Kris Venstermans, Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere. Transactions on High-Performance Embedded Architectures and Compilers, 1(1):52-72, June 2006.
• Garbage collection hints, Dries Buytaert, Kris Venstermans, Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 3793, Springer-Verlag. In proceeding of the international conference on high performance embedded architectures & compilers (HIPEAC'05), Barcelona, Spain, November 2005.
• FPGA-aware garbage collection in Java, Philippe Faes, Mark Christiaens, Dries Buytaert, Dirk Stroobandt. In proceedings of the international conference on field programmable logic and applications (FPL'05), Tampere, Finland, August 2005.
• Bottleneck analysis in Java applications using hardware performance monitors, Dries Buytaert, Andy Georges, Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere. In proceedings of the ACM conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (OOPSLA '04 companion), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, October 2004.
• Method-level phase behavior in Java workloads, Andy Georges, Dries Buytaert, Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere. In proceedings of the ACM conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (OOPSLA '04), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, October 2004.
• Dynamic delivery of end-user services using Java, Chris Gray and Dries Buytaert. In proceedings of the Java and embedded systems symposium (JAES'02), Gent, Belgium, November 2002.
• A selective runtime compiler for the Wonka Virtual Machine, Dries Buytaert, Frans Arickx, Steven Buytaert and Johan Vos. In proceedings of the symposium on program acceleration through application and architecture driven code transformations (PA3CT '02), Edegem, Belgium, September 2002.
• A profiler and compiler for the Wonka Virtual Machine, Dries Buytaert, Frans Arickx and Johan Vos. In proceedings of the second Java Virtual Machine research and technology symposium (JVM '02), WIP session, San Francisco, USA, August 2002.
• A dynamic service delivery framework based on the OSGi model, Johan Vos, Steven Buytaert and Dries Buytaert. In proceedings of the international conference on advances in infrastructure for electronic business, education, science and medicine on the internet (SSGRR '02), L'aquila, Italy, January 2002.