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).