Joomla! in the press

[Jinx]

The goal of this thread is to gather press links for Joomla! it's not intended to be a discussion thread. Please post your link and a small description of it's contents.

[Jinx]

The Somali Family Services website team pleased to announce the completion of the first phase development on the new Puntland State University website, http://www.puntlandstateuniversity.com

The new website utilizes cutting-edge content management technology that will enable content to be posted by multiple contributors anywhere in the world. This will contribute to universal education and assist the university in extending beyond "bricks and mortar".

Link : http://www.garoweonline.com/stories/pub ... 6858.shtml

[brian]

Linux Format magazine (current issue) http://www.linuxformat.co.uk

Review of CMS gives Joomla 9/10

Drupal wins with 9/10 s well

Sadly the reviewer has completely misunderstood the forge, extensions site and the current stte of joomla and 3pd extensions

[AmyStephen]

6. WEB 2.0: Open-Source and User-Generated Content

This is a continuation of older Internet trends taken to an extreme. In this case, we're referring to powerful software that lets anyone do content management, often in the form of blogging.

You can now use cool and powerful open-source software systems such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla, to name a few. It also means that the user does more work than ever and seems to enjoy it.

The Wikipedia and Wiki software indicate this trend, as does the Digg Web site. And much of this has to do with the coming of age of open-source software, which apparently has a slow development curve that results in fantastic products.

Collectively all this is referred to as Web 2.0.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,242518,00.html

Yea, baby, Joomla! is Web 2.0! 

[AmyStephen]

MANILA, Philippines -- A duo of open-source experts from Europe will give separate workshops in a conference next week organized by advocacy group Institute of Popular Democracy.

The event, titled "Philippine Conference on Free and Open Source Software and E- Governance," will be held March 7-8 at the Edsa Shangri-la Hotel in Mandaluyong City.

Johan Janssens of Belgium and Vladimir Petkov are scheduled to give parallel workshops during the said conference.

Janssens is the lead developer for Joomla! , an open-source community working on a content management system used in developing websites and corporate applications.

Petkov, meanwhile, is project manager of the Interspace Media Arts Center based in Bulgaria and is engaged in developing open source multimedia software.

Describing itself as a non-profit research and advocacy institute, IPD covers five strategic areas: political reform, local governance, social movements, sustainability and international exchange.

IPD has finished a year-long project funded by the European Commission that seeks to promote and pilot open-source applications designed for local government units.

Source: http://www.asianjournal.com/?c=190&a=18386

[ibnhafsun]

PC Actual, a spanish technical magazine, with online and paper edition
Joomla! 1.0.11 review, 02/22/07

Rating  9.3
Quality/Price 9.3
Recommended

Almost perfect, Joomla! is the best Open Source CMS. It is easy to install. The sections and categories management would require a bit more understanding of the system but it´s very impressive when it comes to create and publish articles, specially the WYSIWYG editors and the image manager. A lot of templates, modules and extensions, with one of the greatest community (both users and developers). In spanish, it´s remarkable joomlaspanish.org.

Pros: the most flexible CMS, highly customizable and with a lot of extensions.
Cons: security levels.


Link: http://www.pc-actual.com/Laboratorio/Pr ... 0070215032

[brian]

Virtuemart review

"The latest issue of the german magazine "Internet Professionell" (3/2007) comes with an interesting article about the 3 most popular "Open Source Shops" in Germany: VirtueMart, osCommerce and xtCommerce. It's very interesting to read about the comparison of those 3 shop systems and their Pros and Cons."

More infor here

[brian]

University of Nebraska abandons Microsoft for Japersoft with a Joomla! front end

http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresourc ... _of_n.html

Way to go amy

[CoolAcid]

Here's another view of the article : http://enterprise.linux.com/article.pl? ... 36&tid=101

[brian]

A bit late but Christian Computing Magazine an article on Joomla! and it's use by the church

http://ccmag.gospelcom.net/0906/0906ifc.pdf

[humvee]

UK Print only magazine PCPlus April 2007 issue.

Section on Website Development - Practical Focus - includes a brief referral to Joomla! in a general article on Creating 21st Century Website.

Other systems such as Drupal, Wordpress, PostNuke, PHPNuke are also mentioned and Wordpress, Drupal, PHP-fusion, PostNuke, and ExpressionEngine Core are all included on free cover DVD.

Andy

[AmyStephen]

SDA Asia Magazine::News::Adding PHP Code in Joomla Content

A post over the Smart-pad [URL banned] web site shows you ways to add PHP code in Joomla content. It says, its possible to add this in numerous ways.

The author gives the following three ways to carry out the procedure:

Static Files component

You have to download this component from http://www.joomlaxt.com/. A guide to facilitate better understanding can be found here.

Custom Module Or Component

If you know how to program, you can write your own module or component. A module and component is different. The author says to use the Joomla Developer Toolkit if you want a quick solution.

kl_php bot

It’s a mamboot that let's you embed PHP codes right into your Joomla content. This can be found in the Mambo forum or in the Joomla Extension site. Download kl_php bot, the author explains.

Read the Post

Source: http://www.sda-asia.com/sda/news/psecom ... apore.html GPR = 7/10 Alexa = 115,978

[brian]

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald

"For Grant Swinbourne, general manager of Online Channels at Jetstar Airways, the decision to use an open source content management system, Joomla!, saved his company software licensing costs close to $100,000 and "hundreds of hours" in contract negotiations and budget approvals."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/open ... 69115.html
http://www.theage.com.au/news/biztech/o ... 69115.html

[AmyStephen]

Juchu Joomla1.5 - article for the german linux magazine by Lukewill

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,152890.0.html

[AmyStephen]

March 22, 2007 11:13 AM Eastern Daylight Time

World’s Domain Name & Hosting Leader Backs Open Source Community - GoDaddy.com Donates $10K to Both Joomla & Simple Machines

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GoDaddy.com® is giving back to the Internet community by supporting open source applications with cash donations of $10,000 each.

Joomla, a Content Management System, and Simple Machines Forum, an online community forum, received the donations from GoDaddy.com to assist in further development of their applications.

"We are delighted that Go Daddy decided to donate to an open source project like Joomla," said Shayne Bartlett of Joomla.org. "It's refreshing to see a big tech company supporting Joomla's ambitions. Donations like Go Daddy's go a long way to covering resource costs and our continued success."

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/sit ... ewsLang=en

[brad]

Original news release: https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/news/rel ... &app%5Fhdr

[Tralli]

Webseiten gestalten mit Open Source Software
Content-Management mit Joomla

Als vor ein paar Jahren die ersten Content-Management-Systeme auch für kleinere Webseiten interessant wurden, erstellte ich ein erstes Projekt mit dem mittlerweile veralteten Postnuke und war von Anfang an begeistert, wie einfach es sein kann Webseiten zu erstellen und zu verwalten. Mit Joomla wird nun die Erstellung von professionellen Webseiten (fast) zum Kinderspiel.

Joomla! LogoJoomla ist aus dem Projekt „Mambo“ hervorgegangen und konnte daher bereits auf ein gutes Grundgerüst aufbauen. Dank OpenSource und sauberer Programmierung fand es bereits viele Nutzer, was Google mit über 42 Mio. Sucherergebnissen für „Joomla“ bescheinigt.

Die Dokumentation, Hilfe und Foren sind für den Erfolg für OpenSource Produkte unabdingbar. Die deutsche Joomla-Community ist hier besonders aktiv: eine ausführliche Dokumentation findet man bei Wikibooks, die offizielle deutsche Joomla Seite hält neben Neuigkeiten zu Joomla auch eine FAQ, eine Dokumentation unter Hilfe, sowie ein Forum für Fragen, die durch die Dokumentation nicht abgedeckt wurden.

Möchte man Joomla auf seinem Webserver installieren, muss dieser bestimmte Mindestvoraussetzungen erfüllen. Benötigt wird ein funktionierender Webserver z.B. mit Apache ab Version 1.13.19, PHP 4.3 (ab Version 1.5) und MySQL ab Version 3.23.X. Ein Standard-Webserver – keine „Webvistenkarte“ - sollte diese Systemvoraussetzungen in der Regel erfüllen. Homepage von Joomla.de Ist man sich nicht sicher kann man die Software auch zunächst auf den Webserver überspielen. Während der Installation werden die erforderlichen Komponenten überprüft – fehlt eine Komponente bzw. ist sie nicht aktuell, bricht die Installation mit einem entsprechenden Hinweis ab.

Für die Installation lädt man sich den aktuellen Release herunter, z.B. von der Projekt-Homepage bei Sourceforge Nach dem Download entpackt man die Datei und lädt die Inhalte auf den eigenen Webserver. Dann ruft man das Verzeichnis auf dem Webserver auf und die Installation startet automatisch. Nach wenigen Einstellungen, die im Wikibook zu Joomla unter Installation auf einem Webserver beschrieben werden ist die Installation geschafft.

Nach der Installation befindet man sich im „Backend“ der Webseite, also dort wo man sämtliche Einstellungen vornimmt. Hiermit sollte man sich zunächst vertraut machen und sich einen Überblick verschaffen. Danach empfiehlt es sich, eine Testseite zu erstellen und die einzelnen Elemente auszuprobieren, bevor man sein Werk beginnt.

Homepage von Joomla-Downloads.deWichtiger Bestandteil der neuen Webseite: das Template. Das Template gibt den Aufbau der Webseite und damit auch das Design wieder. Für Fortgeschrittene ist der Entwurf eines eigenen Templates bereits recht aufwendig, Anfänger sollten auf die unzählig im Netz -meist frei vorhandenen- Templates zurückgreifen. Eine gute Template-Quelle mit einer Live-Vorschau findet sich z.B. bei joomla-downloads.de

Sind die ersten Hürden genommen, das Template installiert, die ersten Texte erfasst, kann man seine neue Seite mit ein paar Modulen aufwerten. Für Joomla gibt es unzählige Module, die allerlei nützliche Dinge wie z.B. Newsletter, Gästebücher, Instant Messaging, Statistiken, etc. im Handumdrehen bereitstellen. Hierfür das gewünschte Modul downloaden und in das entsprechende Verzeichnis auf dem Server kopieren. Im Backend von Joomla lassen sich dann einzelne Module aktivieren bzw. deaktivieren. Viele nützliche Module finden sich z.B. bei Joomlaos.de

Joomla ist eine überzeugende Software die sich sowohl für die Erstellung kleiner privater, als auch großer, professioneller Internetseiten eignet. Wer einmal versucht hat eine Webseite mit einem HTML-Editor zu schreiben, wird die Unkompliziertheit von Joomla zu schätzen wissen. Sicherlich ist es für Neulinge auf dem Gebiet der Homepageerstellung nicht einfach – der gute Support über die deutschen Foren wie Joomlaportal.de und die einfache Verwaltung im täglichen Betrieb entlohnen jedoch für die Einarbeitung in die Materie. Zudem ist Joomla kostenlos und von daher auf jeden Fall einen Versuch Wert!

Joomla wird veröffentlicht unter GNU Public Licence Die aktuelle Version ist 1.0.12, die Veröffentlichung von Version 1.5 steht kurz bevor Downloaden können Sie die jeweils aktuelle Version bzw. die Beta bei http://www.joomlaos.de/ unter „Downloads“

Offizielle Webseite von Joomla: http://www.joomla.org/


Published by http://www.hitflip.de in Newsletter and Lexikon
Link to Article: http://lexikon.hitflip.de/joomla

[AmyStephen]

Polytechnics to develop open source gateway

The gateway system will provide access to the Ministry’s e-learning Collaborative Development Fund (eCDF) project resources and tools
By Rob O'Neill, Auckland | Wednesday, 2 May, 2007

The Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics of New Zealand (ITPNZ) is embarking on a project to develop an open source gateway to Ministry of Education’s e-learning resources.

The project, which is funded by the Ministry and led from Bay of Plenty Polytechnic, will produce a gateway system providing access to the Ministry’s e-learning Collaborative Development Fund (eCDF) project resources and tools.

“It will also provide a community environment where users can collaborate on projects, discuss and develop best practice, [and] build and grow their own communities based around their respective eLearning interests,” ITPNZ explains in a tender document issued last week.

The development will be based on open source software to reduce total cost of ownership and deliver improved fit. Open source content management systems that handle community environments will be considered. ITPNZ lists several of these, including Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress among others.

“Central to the project’s vision is the use and support of open source tools and software to ensure ease of accessibility and further use of any technology developed within the project,” ITPNZ says.

The open source approach is favoured because it will allow ITPNZ to leverage the resources of the open source development community, encourage collaboration among tertiary education organisations, and to allow the project to potentially contribute to eLearning framework development within the open source community.

The project, called SPEEKS, is due to be completed by the end of August but vendors are being asked to guarantee the capacity for major development from the end of May.

Copyright © Fairfax Business Media A Division of John Fairfax Publications Pty Limited, 2006 Privacy Policy

[AmyStephen]

PHPDeveloper.org

Joomla! 1.5 Beta-2 (Red Barchetta) Released
Tuesday May 08, 2007 @ 14:10:00

The latest release of the Joomla! CMS has been announced - version 1.5 Beta-2 has been posted for download.
   

Joomla! proudly presents its most important coding adrenaline surge to the development and designer community. With today's release of Joomla! 1.5 Beta-2, we're shifting gears into turbo mode; an entirely re-factored core, internationalisation, FTP layering, next-generation API and framework that's so flexible and powerful and, of course, a designer's dream for unparalleled templating flexibility.

Along with this release ("Red Barchetta"), they also encourage the community to participate and to contribute to the community, giving back their time and skills to help make the CMS even better.

tags: release joomla redbarchette beta download

[brian]

http://www.computeractive.co.uk/compute ... e-software

Verdict

An excellent CMS system

[AmyStephen]

SDA India Magazine: Joomla 1.5 Beta-2 Released
Wednesday, 9. May 2007

Joomla has announced Joomla 1.5 Beta 2. This release has switched on to turbo gears, an entirely re-factored core, internationalization, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) layering, Application Programming Interface (API) and framework .

They have dubbed Beta-2 as 'Red Barchetta'. You can use it by using the codebase — making your current extenstions and templates compatible, creating new extensions, new templates and making use of all the features in 1.5. This also happens to be the last beta prior to release candidate.

All templates for Joomla! 1.0.x can be used in Joomla! 1.5. A lot of features have been added to the templating system in Joomla! 1.5, but all 1.0.x templates can be used within Joomla! 1.5. There are several resources that describe the new template features, a great resource is the template tutorial and the BEEZ template that is included in Beta-2.

Download here.

[eyezberg]

Two major french PHP / Webdev magazines feature Joomla! this month:
* Competence Micro dedicates a full issue to our CMS of choice:
http://www.competencemicro.com/booklet.php?id=162
* PHP Solutions includes an article about it:
http://phpsolmag.org/fr/phpsolmag/issues/3_2007.html

We already get some visits to joomla.fr thanks to these - bring on RC!

[eyezberg]

Here's the TOC of "Compétence Micro" in case someone is interested - notice the error of 1.4 instead of 1.0.x..

[AmyStephen]

ZDNet.co.uk - CMS evolution, publishing revolution?
By Mike Barrett
Wednesday, May 30, 2007

...text omitted...

Mainstream content management systems are only now starting to provide similar flexibility for publishers. Open source products such as Drupal and Joomla now offer a viable way for smaller businesses to get on line effectively. Like the blogging platforms, they introduce the opportunity to create multiple sites, cost effectively, by re-using functionality, content and platforms. But how many publishers are actually taking advantage of this? Often, even where publishers have multiple sites, many are still designed and built in isolation from their stablemates as businesses fail to understand the benefits of one platform.

...text omitted...

Source: http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,100 ... 44b,00.htm

[AmyStephen]

InfoWorld: JumpBox - Virtual Appliances Made Easy
Posted by David Marshall on May 26, 2007

JumpBox has a simple goal in life, to make the deployment of server based software so easy, anyone can do it.

To do that, the company is creating a library of pre-installed, pre-integrated open source web applications that are bundled with the JumpBox platform. Using virtualization software like VMware, you simply download these application packages onto your computer, take about 30 seconds to configure everything and then run them. They make easy work of deploying these types of applications.

The company recently announced two new JumpBox bundled applications to their library: Joomla! and SugarCRM.

The Joomla! JumpBox was the most requested application on their download survey. Joomla! is described as one of the more popular content management systems today and is used widely around the world. This JumpBox includes Joomla! version 1.0.12.

The SugarCRM JumpBox comes with SugarCRM version 4.5.1c. If you aren't familiar with SugarCRM, it is a customer relationship management system that can be used to enhance marketing performance, drive sales, improve customer satisfaction and provide overall insight into business performance.

To make things even easier, JumpBox has recently added (at the request of many users in the company's forums) a series of tutorials on how to accomplish specific tasks with setting up and working with JumpBox. Specific questions include:

    * Run a JumpBox the first time after downloading
    * Backup your data
    * Restore your data from a previous backup
    * Configure the JumpBox to use a proxy
    * Change the admin password
    * Set a static IP address
    * Login to the application itself

These and more tutorials can be found on the Web site or accessed here.

You can find out more about JumpBox and their offerings, here.

Source: http://weblog.infoworld.com/virtualizat ... rtual.html

[AmyStephen]

Joomla Sticks With the GPL
By Michael Calore June 15, 2007 | 1:52:20 PM

The fight for any good cause demands sacrifice. So, Joomla admins, get ready to clean house.

The Core Team of the open-source content management system project has announced its commitment to full compliance with the Gnu General Public License, the leading free software license.

Joomla is a content management system used for everything from small blogs to large e-commerce sites. In fact, much of the functionality on those business-minded sites comes from third-party Joomla extensions, a good number of which are proprietary and/or not compatible with the GPL. Under this new paradigm, Joomla-powered sites running extensions with proprietary code will need to ditch those extensions and adopt free alternatives in order to comply with GPL guidelines prohibiting their use.

From the announcement:

We've also decided that we do not have the authority to publish Joomla! under a version of the GPL that gives exceptions for proprietary extensions... Our current understanding is that extensions that aren't released under the GPL or compatible licenses are non-compliant, and that view is based on the guidance of both the Free Software Foundation and the Software Freedom Law Center.

Joomla only exists because of a strong belief in the importance of open-source software. The project was started by a group of engineers who walked out on the Mambo project when control was swiped out from under them by Mambo's benefactor, the Australian corporation Miro, in August, 2005.

The team is asking the Joomla community to voluntarily comply. They aren't interested in suing anyone into compliance, so we'll see how that strategy shakes out. Also unknown is what financial impact this move will have on the number (thousands? tens of thousands?) of sites running Joomla, and how huge or small of a headache this transition will be.

[AmyStephen]

GPL compliance issues are tearing Joomla! apart
Tuesday June 19, 2007 (02:08 AM GMT)

By: Tina Gasperson

Joomla! project leader Louis Landry and his colleagues want to protect the project they love. That's why, after two years of allowing proprietary plugins for the open source CMS, the group has decided to ask third-party developers for voluntary compliance with the terms of the GNU General Public License, under which Joomla! is licensed. Those developers are complaining that it's unfair for Joomla! to reverse its position after "a bunch of companies spent millions," according to one developer employed by a company that markets the proprietary extensions. Landry says he and the Joomla! team were wrong to have allowed the exceptions, and a return to compliance is essential in order to legally protect the open nature of Joomla!.

Joomla! was born in 2005 as a fork from the Mambo CMS. The entire core development team, as well as many of the third-party developers, left the Mambo community because they believed that Miro, the corporation behind Mambo, was planning to close the code on the project. The developers formed Open Source Matters (OSM), a nonprofit organization with the sole purpose of supporting and protecting Joomla!. OSM secured the services of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) to help it navigate the muddy waters of running a free software project, especially one as wary of legal claims from its previous parent company as Joomla!.

"They asked us to help them manage the split," says James Vasile, counsel for SFLC. "We did that, making sure all the legal bases were covered. There were some rumblings about the Mambo split [possibly] not working, and Mambo having legal claims on the code. We settled all that for them."

In addition to the code base, one of the things the Joomla! core development team brought with it from Mambo was a tolerance for non-GPL compliant extensions. Many third-party developers believe that tolerance is part of what makes Joomla! so popular. In an open letter to the Joomla! core team, the Joomla Commercial Developer's Alliance (JCDA), wrote, "It is widely agreed among the Joomla! community that the vast number of extensions that are available for Joomla! has helped to establish Joomla! as a winning formula across the internet as a stable, functional and feature filled platform to build websites upon."

It seemed that Joomla! had created a thriving economy for developers, arguably because its tolerance for proprietary extensions attracted entrepreneurs who discovered an audience hungry for inexpensive but useful add-ons. Further solidifying the third-party developers' position that they were within their rights to develop non-GPL addons, Landry and others explicitly stated in Joomla! forums that the decision about whether to allow proprietary extensions was up to the copyright holder. In a June 2006 topic entitled "1.5 licence change clarification," Landry wrote that the Joomla! license in version 1.5 would "make sure that commercial third-party developers that use Joomla! as a platform can do so without fear of having to release GPL."

This April, a discussion at the Joomla! forums focused on the growing concern among the core developers that the extensions and templates upon which so many successful businesses had been built were violating Joomla!'s GPL license. "It was something that had been in the back of our minds," Landry says. "We were uncertain about our legal stance, and it concerned many of us." Landry says the team couldn't help but notice that none of the other open source CMS projects allowed third-party developers to market proprietary extensions. As the Joomla! project continued to move toward the 1.5 release, team members decided to ask Vasile whether the GPL really did allow non-free add-ons.

"Every couple of months they try to improve the process a bit," Vasile says. "One of the things we talked about was increasing the rate of GPL compliance in their community." He says the Joomla! core team came to realize they had a "GPL problem" but weren't sure what to do about it. "I laid out their range of options and they realized that they needed to move" in the direction of a voluntary compliance effort. "Along the way, they were hoping to teach people about what it takes to comply." Vasile says the Joomla! core developers came to the project with a less than full understanding of the GPL, but "at this point, the team understands quite well. I've tried to give them guidance, but most have done their own research."

Some of the third-party developers marketing the extensions are angry because they believe Joomla! is trying to force them to release their source code under the GPL. "They said their announcement was the beginning of the discussion," says Merav Knafo, the owner of iJoomla, a development company that sells proprietary extensions to Joomla!. "But to us, it sounded like the end of the discussion." Knafo maintains that there was a written rider allowing the non-GPL extensions attached to the Joomla! license and published at the Web site, but that the core team recently removed it without telling anyone. "They're making us do something illegal now without even knowing about it. The way for them to fix it would be to put the rider back."

Vasile says no version of Joomla! "has ever gone out with a rider."

Landry wants developers to understand that the reason Joomla! wants to move closer to the GPL is to protect the project. "If we are condoning violations, we're weaker in a legal sense. If someone challenged our license down the road, if we've systematically been condoning violations, they could say, 'What's different now?'" For instance, he says, there have been several occasions when other parties have simply lifted Joomla! code, rebranded it, and released it as a commercial product. "That's clearly not acceptable," Landry says. "But the more we condone, the more these people have the ability to argue that we're not enforcing the license anyway."

Regardless, Knafo is vehemently against the idea of re-licensing her extensions. "We will never release our software as GPL, never!" She says the core team doesn't understand what it is asking of the third-party developers. "The Joomla! core developers are very young. They don't have a lot of real life experience. They don't understand how things work in the real world. If you don't compensate people in the real world, they're not going to do it."

Knafo says she and other third-party developers are looking at all their options. "There are many thoughts about creating a fork that's friendly to commercial developers," she says. "Then there will be Joomla!, with lots of free extensions but no commercial ones, and a fork that has support for commercial extensions. This could be really bad for Joomla!. If they leave us no choice, we will do that. We have already put so much effort into this, and we want to keep doing business."

Landry says he understands that the developers are worried by the impending changes, and he sympathizes. "That's one of the reasons why we said this is going to be a long and slow road. We're not overnight saying you have to completely change. We're not coming after [them]." He laments what he says is the extreme reaction Joomla! has received from the third-party developers. "A lot of these people are our friends. It's been really shocking to see some of the really nasty language and the rough communications come out of some of them. To be honest, I'm not really clear on why they feel so threatened. It disturbs me that people all of a sudden feel like we're in an attacking posture. One of the things I have reiterated is that we are completely a peaceful project. We're not going after anybody -- we're asking nicely for voluntary compliance so that all of us can protect the project we all know and love. I can't make it any more clear than that."

++++

Story also carried by:
LinuxToday
LWN

Edit: added additional sources.

[AmyStephen]

Joomla! CMS faces a governance challenge
20-Jun-2007

Submitted by: Tony Byrne, Analyst

A nicely-researched article on Linux.com investigates a growing dust-up in the Joomla! community regarding licensing and business models. Joomla! is an open source CMS package that forked from Mambo a couple of years ago. After encouraging 3rd-party development of commercially add-on modules, Joomla's leadership is reconsidering its approach in light of the core package's somewhat purer GPL license, and is now pushing for "voluntary" GPL compliance on behalf of module developers. Those developers, of course, are pushing back. Ironically, some of the same issues underpinned the original split from Mambo, and perhaps inevitably, there are whispers of another fork, though I think that's unlikely.

The dispute highlights several issues that get debated -- sometimes furiously -- in the open source world, e.g., what constitutes an "extension" to the core, and what "proprietary" means, especially when talking about an interpreted (rather than compiled) language like PHP. I suspect the Joomla! community will sort it all out, but to me it highlights yet another key measure in evaluating open source packages: the maturity of the community. Joomla! boasts an extraordinarily wide and active following, but the community itself remains comparatively young and therefore finds itself still sorting through governance challenges that other CMS communities have already overcome.

Should that matter? Perhaps not, if you are building a personal or simple website (Joomla!'s core use-case). But perhaps so, if you are staking a mission-critical publishing operation and intend to employ many commercial extensions.

[AmyStephen]

Joomla Revolution! How This Free Software Is Changing The Web
by: Antonio De Luca
Article City,  July 18, 2007

Joomla is changing the web, there is no one better sentence to describe what this young FREE SOFTWARE project is doing from two years ago. We all know that the web permeates today all sides of our life and therefore is perfectly comprehensible that Joomla, been born as a CMS for simplified construction of sites of all types, is interesting a lot of people around the world for the incredible amount of its FREE extensions, that are available through the central site extension.joomla.org, and for its large development community that give support and constantly enhancements of features.

But now Joomla wouldn't not be more considered only a CMS, whatever are the applicative targets in which we are interested to use it for. The time of standalone applications is ending and therefore we should understand that a revolutionary web application platform as Joomla is the right solution that all people are waiting for. The new version of Joomla, currently in Beta2 state, is an innovative and intuitive implementation of the MVC pattern, a famous generalized programming architecture that force the developers to write a more scalable and manageable code and that give to others a lot of competitive advantages as User Interface separation, lower development cost, greater reusability and maximized stability and adaptability.

Joomla 1.5, that's the version number of the new platform, has been rewrote from the scratch by the Core Development Team to obtain a very powerful framework that will boost web developer productivity and that will maximize the users experience. Obviously the Core Team don't know what will be the really boom that this new project would generate on the web but we can admit for sure that the stable release is attended from thousands of people.

Joomla 1.5 have the great merit of not attempt to be a "all purpose application in itself", trying instead to give users a solid platform around which can revolve various types of third party developed web applications. Joomla 1.5 is using moreover only well supported and diffused technologies as PHP and MySQL and it join these ones with an Enterprise oriented vision.

Joomla 1.5 is not compatible with the old Joomla 1.0.X and therefore a lot of people are thinking that only a few part of already existing extensions will be adapted to this system. The problem is that not all extensions, more precisely a lot few, are compatible with the new version of this framework. Some people believe that a software, that already do well what it would have to be done, is already a perfect software and that there are no reasons to change the way it work. They can ask for: "Why I should change my perfectly running system?". The answer is simple: "Because the time is changing and is not possible to use again a bicycle to drive into an highway".

Joomla 1.5 will help developers to implement stronger and powerful applications that will be available only to who will approach a new web project using this new platform. At the same time others old Joomla extensions , that are not compatible, will remain out of a market that will have the maximum momentum in the nearest future.

Many people have talked in those last years about the end of Internet economy and about a possible crash of all the infrastructure. Nothing wouldn't be more wrong. Internet is the future and only now we are seeing it arriving in our real daily life.

Internet is far from the period in which it was constituted of simple sites. Now internet is becoming a complex network of interactive systems and a lot of our social and economic habits are already based on it or they will be very soon. Every days thousands of people, companies and institutions join the big network with the objective of not only read/made some simple web pages.

Today we all ask for more interactivity and integrability of systems that get us capable of live and work in the new global world. Unfortunately users understanding is not evolving as fast as the global system in itself. We all also ask for solutions that simplify this tremendous competition and that will define a standard to help people in managing their web experience.

Evolution is not really if it is not for all and therefore a good solution MUST BE a FREE SOFTWARE one that people can use, modify, adapt and redistribute without limits. People need also simplicity because they wouldn't lose their time in trying to understand all the technological background.

Joomla 1.5 is offering NOW a FREE and REVOLUTIONARY web applications framework that with the use of thousands of external third party applications get users capable of implement their web place. It is very simple to install, config and use. Extensions are constantly growing and will cover all aspects of online activities very soon.

Joomla 1.5 will be the best choice for every day web development when interaction and availability of software would not continue to be limited on a single workstation. Joomla 1.5 will be the obviously choice for who will want to start projects with usability and simplification in mind. Joomla 1.5 will be the next web revolution for people that are not expert or guru. Joomla 1.5 will be the New Internet Indoor for who have never thought that he can do anything of this type. Joomla 1.5 will discover the Internet Potential of all people.

[AmyStephen]

Slate Nominees for the '07 Open Source CMS Awards
By Angela Natividad, CMS Wire
Published: Jul 18. 2007

Riding the wave of 72 nominations and 15,000 votes, Joomla! was declared winner of Packt’s 2006 Open Source CMS Awards. With much fanfare, the Awards are back, and nominations are now open.

Who will win open source gold?

This year’s ceremony is slightly different from last year’s, boasting both a higher stake in prize cash and fresh new categories. Along with a winning fund totaling US$ 20,000, open source contenders can compete for the following new titles:

    * Best social networking CMS
    * Best open source PHP CMS
    * Best other open source CMS
    * Most promising open source CMS
    * Overall Winner (there will definitely be crying over this one)

There’s nothing like winning a pageant to get your spirits up.

The Open Source CMS Award was originally developed to encourage and recognize an open source CMS selected by a set of judges and visitors. But this year, instead of shining light on the talents of just one, Packt has sought to recognize other achievements in the ever-broadening open source world.

“For this year’s Awards, we wanted to support and give more exposure to a broader range of open source Content Management Systems” said Marketing Manager Damian Carvill.

“We received a fantastic response to last year’s Award and it confirmed our view that there is an impressive number of professional level open source Content Management Systems with large and enthusiastic communities.”

The US$ 20,000 prize will be divided between the five winners - the overall winner receives US$ 5,000, with second and third places receiving US$ 3,000 and US$ 2,000, respectively. The other two winners get US$ 2,000 each. And word on the street relates that there will also be opportunities to win an iPod Nano. (How can you miss out now?)

Get involved and start nominating at the Packt awards page.