Plone News & Articles

Welcome to July 2009 installment of our what's coming from the open source CMS projects in the next 30 days.

If you're looking through here and feel that your project was left out, we invite you to send us an email at pr@cmswire.com with a pointer to who we should contact at your project for updates.

The initial vision for Plone 4 was so complex that it wasn't slated for release until 2010. In order to allow for smaller, more focused releases, Plone (news, site) Founder Alexander Limi announced at the Plone Symposium at Penn State that the Plone Roadmap has been revised. What was originally Plone 4 has been split into Plone 4 and Plone 5.

The Plone (news, site) project has launched a user feedback system for collecting Plone improvement ideas. This tool allows Plone users to suggest, discuss, and vote on ways the open source CMS can be improved.

While the project doesn't promise that every idea will be implemented, they intend to use this system to understand what Plone users want to see added and improved. In particular, the team recommends that anyone interested in contributing to the project should take a look and see what ideas are the most in demand and sound like something they may want to work on.

If you find something and end up working on a significant new feature or change, then you'll pull together a Plone Improvement Proposal, or PLIP. This PLIP will be reviewed by the Framework Team assigned to the major release you're aiming for (as an example, the deadline for Plone 4 PLIPs just passed).

For more information:

• See the FAQ "How to suggest a feature for Plone"
• Submit and browse Plone improvement ideas
• Read the official idea system launch posting

The Plone (news, site) 4 Framework Team has put out a call for Plone Improvement Proposals (PLIPs). PLIPs are necessary for any improvements that are larger than a bug fix and should only be submitted if you either plan to do the coding yourself, or pull together people to write it.

Plone 4 will bring Plone up to date with current technologies, while making it easier to work with for integrators and end users. As this release is meant as an intermediate step toward the radically updated Plone 5, hold any changes that "significantly alter backwards compatibility, visuals or APIs" until then.

Turn in your PLIP submissions by 0700 UTC (3am EDT) on 20 June 2009. To do so, look over previous PLIPs as a guide to what format to use, create a ticket with the type PLIP, and then enter your proposal.

Include information such as:

• Why is the change important?
• How will this change be achieved?
• What downsides are there to this change being adopted?

When it's ready for consideration, set the milestone to 4.0. From there, you will receive feedback from the Framework Team. The team will then vote on submissions and set deadlines for when they must be ready. The code must be complete by the stated deadline to be included in the release.

As we've mentioned previously, the Plone (news, site) community has been in discussions over a slight change to licensing policy. No, Plone is not changing licenses. It's sticking with the GPL.

However, Plone is now also offering the option for those building Plone Framework Components to apply for permission to use a modified BSD license for their components instead of the GPL.

This move is primarily meant to make it easier for componentized Plone code to interact with Zope and Python projects without causing GPL violations. Requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis for components that:

• Are in the plone.* namespace, not the plone.app.* namespace.
• Don't have imports from GPL-licensed code.

The primary developer/maintainer must be willing to ensure the component won't acquire dependencies on GPL-licensed code.

For the official description of the new policy and associated FAQs, see the Plone Framework Components Relicensing Policy document.

Some might say that over the ten years since the Plone (news, site) project was founded, the Plone community has developed an organizational fetish. However, that fetish has served them well -- leading to 2 Packt Open Source CMS Awards, participation in events like the Google Summer of Code and a worldwide Python-powered following. Here's a look at where the Plone project is today.

Welcome to the first installment of our new end-of-the-month look at what you can expect from open source CMS projects in the next 30 days. We're just getting started and are counting on you, our community members to help us gather the key facts.

Here's what you can expect in May 2009. To avoid playing favorites, the projects are presented in alphabetical order.

The next phase of Google's Summer of Code reveals that Google is sponsoring stipends for 18 Drupal developers. Out of this total of US$ 90,000 in stipends, US$ 4,500 goes to each of the selected student developers and US$ 500 goes to the Drupal Association or to the mentors who guide the students.

Each of the 18 students is working on a different project, including a Drupal first. The father-son team of Jim and Jimmy Berry will work on one of the projects together, bringing the idea of the Drupal family up to a new level.

For information on the 18 projects, the students behind them and the mentors, see the official Drupal announcement. Many more open source and CMS-related projects were selected for the Google Summer of Code as well, including PHP, Joomla!, Plone and others.

From Leipzig to São Paolo and beyond, it’s World Plone Day 2009 today.

Following a yearly tradition, Plone has attracted more than 30 members of its community in 22 countries to participate in today’s event.

Plone system integrators, user groups and developers are holding global seminars, trainings and meet-ups to show potential users how this open source technology can benefit their content management strategies.

WPD has one mission: to be the CMS’ own evangelist and spread the word about the open source CMS Plone around the world. Hence, a series of presentations that highlight Plone’s advantages -- be it in SEO, web content management, collaboration or social software.

This “follow the sun” event is still going on. Here are some useful resources:

• Official site
• Events and locations list
• Live updates on Twitter #worldploneday
• Live video streaming and clips

Oh, and it's Earth Day today, too. Check out green ECM tips at AIIM.

Black Duck Software recently released a report on how much the current open source codebase is worth, in terms of development costs and manpower. We caught up with their EVP of Marketing and Business Development, Peter Vescuso, to discuss the implications for the Content Management Systems community.

You aren't interested in SharePoint, so our piece on 7 Must Read Articles for SharePoint didn't tickle your fancy. Instead, you spend your time in the world of open source.

Fortunately for you, so do we. At a time of tight budgets and whispers of interoperability are everywhere, open source is something you can't ignore. Whether your interest is Joomla!, Drupal, XOOPs, Alfresco or one of the many other open source content management systems available, we have the information to guide you on your path.

Here are five must read articles on Open Source Content Management Systems.

Since 2005, one of Google's more popular projects has been the Google Summer of Code (GSoC). The GSoC is a global program that pairs participating open source projects with student developers. Students accepted to the GSoC receive a stipend and are assigned mentors within specific projects.

The GSoC is definitely a win-win proposition for the students, who gain real world experience and the open source projects, who not only have the chance to get some key features done faster than they would otherwise, but also might gain long-time contributors from the process.

Open Source Web Content Management is well-represented in this year's list of 150 accepted projects. Mentor organizations accepted this year include Drupal, Joomla!, TikiWiki CMS/Groupware, Moodle, Plone, WordPress, Geeklog and Typo3.

Numerous related projects including wikis, foundation technologies like those provided like the Apache Software Foundation and groups such as the Creative Commons whose licenses back a lot of Web Content Management Systems's content were also included.

Version 3.3 of the Plone web content management system is on its way, and the Plone Foundation is inviting all and sundry to help test during its short beta cycle. Come one, come all, pound on this baby and make it great.

Open source web content management systems are starting to gain some traction in the enterprise as the ever growing need to be cost conscience continues.

Most organizations are looking for a single solution to manage multiple sites -- whether they be microsites for marketing campaigns or fully fledged websites. This means multi-site management capabilities are becoming a critical differentiator for Web CMS solutions.

But not all multi-site management capabilities are created equal. We took a look at the multi-site management capabilities of three of the most popular open source web content management systems and this is what we found.

November 7th marks the 2008 World Plone Day. Plone, winner of the 2008 Best Other Open Source CMS Award and their ever-supportive community are making this World Plone Day something special.

They are collaborating on how to fight the current economic crisis affecting millions world-wide right now. And considering it’s happening on 5 continents, 31 countries and over 60 cities, they just might be able to come up with some solutions.