mercredi 21 juin 2006

Belated happy birthday, Plone Foundation I'm in NYC this week working with Enfold. Yesterday, over a few frosty beverages with Alan, I realized that the Plone Foundation turned 2 years old last month. And I didn't even buy it a cake. What's happened in those 2 years? Here are some things I can think of off the top of my head: Bootstrapped. The PF has over a hundred members now, is legally incorporated based on bylaws arrived at by consensus, and has its definition of merit-based membership. We've had two annual meetings with over 80 in attendance. Took a while, but that part is done. Tax exempt. Based on hard work done by Toby Roberts from Enfold working with SFLC, the papers are now in. The IRS gave back initial acknowledgment just this week. Two board elections. It takes a bit of work to solicit nominations and conduct a vote by a hundred people. We've gone through 2 board elections after the initial bootstrapping board. Major vote on IP change. We wanted to make a change to Plone's IP scheme so that the PF held the copyright. We went through an open process of discussion, review of SFLC documents, and conducted a vote that resulted in a new contributor agreement and a change to the bylaws. The vote was something like 85-2, which reflected the value of the work put into transparency. People might not agree with the result, but they trust the fairness of the process. Regular, transparent board meetings. The board has met twelve times in the last year. All the minutes, once accepted by vote at the subsequent board meeting, are published on plone.org. Two conferences. The PF managed the process of soliciting proposals to run the Plone Conference and selection of the winner. IP management. The IP committee is doing a good job of managing domain names, notifying people about unacceptable usage, etc. Andrew Hatton from Oxfam GB already has several good wins in this regard. Dispute resolution. As the court-of-last-resort, the PF board handles things that the community doesn't get involved with. Recently Jackie Arasi, a PF board member, adjudicated a dispute in a fair, open process. She really worked at this issue in the right way. Press releases. The PF managed the press release for the previous version of Plone and is now doing one for the 2.5 release. This includes a fundraising campaign to get the release onto the wire in a number of countries. It also includes managing the text to ensure it is fair and doesn't bias one interest over another. Lots of times the PF seems messy, slow to act, unoptimized, etc. Of course, one could say the same thing about democracy. [wink] On the whole, the PF has much to be proud of and is doing a good job of mirroring Plone's meritocracy. So happy belated birthday, Plone Foundation. 7:51:17 AM   comment []

Upfront Systems joins Zea Upfront Systems, a South African solution provider for Zope and Plone, has just become the newest addition to Zea Partners. Upfront (partner page) is very well-regarded in Zope and especially Plone, where most people know Roche and Jean due to their high level of activity and involvement. In most ways, Zope and Plone are in South Africa because of their work. Welcome! The addition of Upfront is part of an intentional push by Zea to incorporate voices outside of Europe. This was part of the reason for our name change from "Zope Europe". Xavier is talking with interested folks from Asia, South America, and North America. If you're interested in learning more about what we are doing with Zea, drop me a line (paul at zeapartners dot org). 7:22:23 AM   comment []