Notes from the Plone Foundation Trenches

Plone's intellectual property is owned by the non-profit Plone Foundation, whose mission it to protect and promote Plone.

The Foundation uses the Plone Conference as a wonderful opportunity to have an “All Member” meeting. Following are my notes…

• The Foundation actually managed to increase its cash on the books in the last year from about $40,000 to about $50,000.
• The Plone trademark is now completely owned by the Plone Foundation worldwide, except for in China which will take a few more years to complete.
• Plone Solutions, which was started by Alex Limi - one of the founders of Plone, will immediately change its name to Jarn, which apparently means “iron” in old Nordic. They decided to make this unbelievably cool move to provide a more level playing field for everybody. They felt uncomfortable with the idea that they would be the only company allowed to use Plone in their name. I am extremely impressed with this decision, which completely came from them - nobody pushed them to do this. This is a clear sign of a very mature open source community.
• A new website, http://plone.net has officially launched as a new home for all business-related content about Plone. It's a place for the press, for decision makers, etc. The point is to remove all of that sort of content from plone.org, which will forevermore be a site solely for developers.
• The Foundation will soon have a new revenue stream - Foundation sponsorship. They will soon be seeking sponsors, and one of the benefits will be placement on plone.net. Sponsorship of the Foundation will be completely tax deductible (in the U.S.)
• With this new revenue stream, the Foundation will begin to invest in several new programs involving marketing, community and the protection of the trademark and copyrights.
• A couple of individuals have already made significant financial contributions to the Foundation (Alex Limi and Joel Burton). Google matched Alex's donation.
• The election for the new Foundation Board is ongoing and will end tomorrow night at midnight (Italian time).

Notes from the Plone Foundation Trenches

\nPlone's intellectual property is owned by the non-profit Plone Foundation, whose mission it to protect and promote Plone. \n\nThe Foundation uses the Plone Conference as a wonderful opportunity to have an \"All Member\" meeting. Following are my notes...

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