So, I was trolling around today and came across a blog post of mine from 2 years ago, you can see it here: What is ‘contributing’ to an Open Source Project?

What’s so incredible is that names have hardly changed, many of those I mentioned 2 years ago are still there contributing as they do so well. Their forum post counts have certainly changed though, many of them doubled a few times. 

It reminded me of the words from a Danish Philosopher who said:

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

.. Joomla has much history, but dwelling on that only helps us to understand. Making things happen are about the future, in life, and in Open Source.

I still believe what I wrote two years ago in conclusion:

Conclusion: There is no utopia. No one, and no project, is perfect. Do we have faults, yes, some of them may be more important to you than they are to me, however the fact remains, if you are here for Joomla, the structure is already in place (maybe not ideal, or perfect) for your contribution to be accepted.

So, will you contribute? If so, I look forward to seeing you in the community, genuinely helping people, in any way you can, within the current provisions that exist. Show me your contributions, and you’ll have my respect! Talk is cheap, amateurs talk, professionals WORK.

Will you be a contributor in the future? That.. is up to you!

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About Joomla and the GPL

The Joomla Project is a GPL community, which means not just that a particular Free and Open Source license is used for Joomla software, but also that we believe in the mission and values behind that license. These include collaboration, community, and freedom. The GPL license embodies these values.

The Joomla Extensions Directory  and the GPL

The Joomla Extensions Directory (JED) is important for many reasons: it makes it easier for users to find extensions, and it helps support the development of a vibrant and healthy commercial and non-commercial development community around Joomla. However, it may also be unintentionally undermining our support of the GPL by including extensions and other applications that run counter to it.

After careful thought and reflection, the Joomla! Project has determined that the Joomla! Extensions Directory should be a community resource that fully embodies the project’s values. 

What Change Are We Making?

Starting on 1 March 2009 only Joomla! extensions licensed under the GNU GPL will be accepted into the JED.  After another three months, from 1 July 2009, such extensions will no longer be listed in the JED.  Under the same schedule, all encrypted or encoded extensions, whether or not they are GPL licensed, will also be excluded. Third party developers are a valued part of our community and in order to make this transition as easy as possible for them we selected a long notification period. This change is designed to strengthen the project’s active commitment to its core mission, vision and values as articulated in September 2008.

Timeline

• Significant change - Forked project must represent a significant code improvement, either in features or security and structure
• Intent to develop and support - Forked project must exhibit an intent to develop and support the new product
• Unique name - We do not allow forked projects by new developers to build on the name of the original developer without permission
• Unique version structure - Version numbering must clearly indicate a new project

 Frequently Asked Questions

What Options Do Developers Have?

The project supports developers who are building and innovating on the Joomla platform. We are committed to providing the information and help that developers need in order to relicense (or to license for the first time, if there is no current license). The JED editors and members of the Core Team and Open Source Matters board are ready to advise or assist any developer who would like this help.If you have any questions about licensing or want help, then you can contact OSM with the following email address license@opensourcematters.org or the JED editors at team@extensions.joomla.org. Developers not currently using the GNU GPL may choose to switch from their current licensing to the GNU GPL or to no longer participate in the JED.

What if I have some GPL and some non-GPL extensions?

- This policy refers only to those extensions listed in the JED. Your GPL extensions are permitted to be listed on the JED but your non-GPL extensions are not.

Where can I get information about how to license my product using the GNU GPL?

- Every copy of Joomla includes a copy of the GNU GPL with instructions for licensing in the license.php file. Instructions are also available from the Free Software Foundation.

All you need to do is add two elements to each source file of your program: a copyright notice (such as “Copyright 1999 Terry Jones”), and a statement of copying permission, saying that the program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. (Free Software Foundation)

Can I use GPL v3 to license my extension?

- Yes. In particular, you may need to use GPLv3 if you rely on certain third party libraries or APIs for your extension.

What GPL version is Joomla! licensed under?

- Joomla! is licensed under GPL v 2.1 or later.

What does this mean for enforcement of the Joomla! license more generally?

- Enforcement of the Joomla! license is a separate issue from the policies of the JED.

Isn’t the JED itself built on a non-GPL extension?

- The current version of the JED built on Joomla 1.5 uses  a GNU GPL extension, Mosets Tree for Joomla 1.5.

What if I think my extension doesn’t violate the Joomla! license?

- This is a policy in favor of software freedom and the mission, vision and values of the Joomla! Project, not one about technical issues in licensing. 

Can I use a GPL compatible license?

- As a resource for a GPL community the JED will only include extensions licensed using the GNU GPL.
 

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Today we are proud to unveil our newest site upgrade!

The Joomla Extensions Directory , or JED as it is affectionately known was today upgraded to Joomla 1.5. Ironically the biggest visible changes though are the new template and a brand spanking new version of Mosets Tree GPL. We’re sure there will be a few teething problems, however, with much input from the community many of the features you have requested and provided feedback on have now been implemented. Some of them include:

New top level category homepage: AS JED grows, there is a growing need to organize information in top level categories and starting from this upgrade, we now have category homepages on most top level categories. It shows you Popular, New, Recently Updated and one random extension from within the category. In addition to that, you will find links to Top Rated, Most Reviewed, Most Rated and Most Favored ranked within the category. With these features, it gives you a greater and faster way to find great extensions.

Improved Recently Updated list: The Recently Updated page will now only list extensions which has been updated by releasing a new version.  Extensions will will appear in this list only when they release a new version of their component, modules, plugins, languages or tools. This new list provides a much more accurate view of recently updated extensions.

New RSS Feed: RSS Feed for Recently Updated extensions

There are now up to 100 extensions for all Top extensions pages.

Developers can now upload 5 screenshots of their extension in addition to a logo

These are just some of the visible new additions to the directory. There are a lot of more changes under the hood and in the interface that will make the experience finding great extensions in JED even better.

Lee, from Mosets had this to say about the migration of Mosets Tree to Joomla! 1.5 as well as his decision to open source Mosets Tree:

“Mosets Tree has been compatible with Joomla! 1.5 through the use of legacy plugin since March 2008 so making it natively compatible is a logical progression of the extension. With the news of phasing out Joomla! 1.0 extensions in June 2009, there is no better time to do this than now. For a big site like JED, one of the advantage of going Joomla! 1.5 has been its performance gain and Mosets Tree has taken full advantage of this. Our tests have show up to 60% improvement in ApacheBench on the new JED, so you can expect some improvement in its load time.

We have also decided to open source two of our best-selling products - Mosets Tree and Hot Property starting with their respective native release for Joomla! 1.5. This will mark a major milestone for Mosets as an open source development company and we believe going open source will be the way forward for extensions to continue to thrive and succeed in Joomla!’s ecosystem.”

We’re sure this new upgraded website will continue to serve the interests of the Joomla community. It’s already our most successful website in terms of traffic and hits (even more than www.joomla.org) and we expect it to continue to remain so. A special thanks to the hard working Editors who not only work each day to edit/approve Extensions, but have also provided much valuable feedback to help improve JED.

So.. what are you waiting for.. check it out now: extensions.joomla.org

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This is just a brief FYI. Today we took the dev.joomla.org site offline pending it’s retirement. Much of the material this site hosted has already been moved/added to the docs.joomla.org wiki. However, we have put this site behind a login for the time being in case someone feels they still need access to migrate some of the left over material.

So.. it’s good bye to an old friend. What’s the next big development happening on the Sites and Infrastructure side of things? You’ll just have to wait and see.

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Today we removed the donation page and links from the Joomla.org family of sites. We did this because our lawyers advised us that soliciting donations on the web creates a host of problems. When you ask for contributions on the web, you are asking all over the world. It turns out that just inside the United States there are over 40 different sets of laws and regulations that you have to comply with, and there are more in various other countries. To file all of the paperwork to be able to do this would cost thousands of dollars and then maintaining the appropriate records and forms each year would be thousands more. The Project gets about 15 percent of its income from donations via our web form, and the OSM board and core team decided that it does not make sense to spend almost the same amount doing that all that legal work. By the way, this doesn’t mean we won’t take donations, just that we can’t ask for them.

Some good materials about this:
http://www.rsmmcgladrey.com/RSM-Resources/Publications/Fundamentals/Fourth-Quarter_1/Protect-your/
http://www.charitableregistry.com/faq.htm

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Perhaps it’s the famous British reserve or just sheer laziness, but it has long surprised me that despite having one of the highest densities of Joomla users of any country in the world, there are remarkably few Joomla User Groups in the UK (just two*) and there has been only a single JoomlaDay (and that way back in 2006).  So it was a particular pleasure to be given the opportunity to play a part in kickstarting at least one new JUG in the UK and to help promote the upcoming JoomlaDay UK 2009.

The venue was the LinuxExpo Live event in London and it took place at the tail end of last week, 23rd to 25th October.  By the time we heard about the event I only had a couple of weeks to make all the preparations, so my apologies for the out-of-date flyers and the hastily thrown together CD’s!  In the end it all went remarkably smoothly and it was a great pleasure to be able to meet and talk to so many people who use Joomla on a regular basis as well as the many people who came by having heard of Joomla but not knowing much about it.

Ryan Ozimek and I were on hand for the full three days and we were kept busy by a constant flow of people asking questions or just dropping in to say hello.  Well over 200 people visited the stand during the event.

Andy Wallace joined us and gave the upcoming JoomlaDay UK 2009 its first public outing.  Almost everyone I spoke to was interested in the event so I would recommend registering early to avoid disappointment.

James Kennard, author of “Mastering Joomla! 1.5 Extension and Framework Development” (available from the Joomla shop), also joined the stand and was kept busy answering questions.  As was Mike Lloyd, who as a Londoner was persuaded to take the plunge and finally get a London Joomla Users Group started.  Although London is a good four hours travelling time from where I live, I look forward to making it to at least one of the London JUG meetings in the near future.

Special thanks to our friends from Packt Publishing who arrived bearing a gift of books.  I put together a quick questionnaire with the books as prizes and this proved very useful in learning more about the people who were visiting our stand.  A huge thank you to Packt for supporting the Joomla project and open source in general.

Our gratitude is also extended to:

• uklinux.net and Linux User and Developer magazine for the stand space in the .org village and for promoting Joomla in the magazine.
• Rob Clayburn (pollen8) for being a great friend and fellow exhibitor.  Best of luck with Fabrik.
• Pete Coutts for his assistance in preparations for the event.
• The London Linux User Group for inviting us to join their special event meeting.  Good, honest pub food and interesting company.

Finally, a huge thank you to Ryan Ozimek, Andy Wallace, James Kennard and Mike Lloyd for their valuable time and support for the event.  We certainly raised the profile of Joomla in the United Kingdom!

* In case you are wondering about the two UK Joomla User Groups they are:

• Joomla User Group Norwich
• Joomla User Group Aberdeen

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I’m probably stealing someones thunder here but I’d just like to announce that the Joomla! Extensions Directory, or JED, today has reached over 4000 Joomla! extensions. This is a testament not only to the developers of our community who continue to produce new extensions to help you customise your Joomla! site the way you want it but towards the great JED Editors team who work behind the scenes to maintain the system and keep it up and running for the community. So thanks to the JED team for all their hard work and thanks to the developers who help to make Joomla! the great system it is today!

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It has been a while that Joomla! was presented in the lovely town of Madrid, Spain. This event was great not only from the location, the audience and the whole environment. A few weeks ago Franck contacted us again and told us that he finished the bookkeeping for the event and thanks to the sponsors of the event he was able to donate 500,- EUR to the JoomlaSpanish community and 1.500,- EUR to the Joomla! project. We are very, very pleased with that and like to thank the whole event team. Special thanks goes to Franck, Igor, Jesús and from JoomlaSpanish to Javi, Jordi, Jordi & Fernando.

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I’m very glad to announce that Joomla is granted a stand at the FOSDEM 2009 in Brussels. We will not only promote the project during the 2 day event but also take the opportunity to talk to various people from other Open Source Projects. The FOSDEM is clearly one of the important Open Source conferences in Europe and it is clearly a place to be in February 2009. If you are around we would really be happy to welcome you on our stand. I created a little thread in our events forum talking about the event so if you are able to make it to Brussels let others know.

Please note that the lightning talks are still accepting applications until the 29th of December. So if you want to presentent something related Joomla just go ahead and we will try to support you best as we can.

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