Leadership Blog

OSM bylaw changes regarding oversight

paul.orwig@community.joomla.org (Paul Orwig) — Wed, 08 May 2013 18:04:56 +0000

In the March 2013 Open Source Matters (OSM) board meeting, the board voted to accept changes to the OSM bylaws that were proposed by the Community Oversight Committee (COC) upon their dissolution. For more details about those proposed changes, please read this previous blog and the public forum discussion.

By voting to accept those proposed changes to the OSM bylaws, OSM has become a self-governing group. In simple terms, this means that OSM is now empowered to add and remove board members on its own, without the approval that was previously required by the COC.

Joomla! 3.1 - Dynamic Tagging Across Content Types

nick@iowawebcompany.com (Nick Savov) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:33:54 +0000

It is our privilege and pleasure to announce the immediate release of Joomla! 3.1. The biggest feature of Joomla 3.1 is Tags, a built-in tagging system chiefly engineered by Elin Waring and Mark Dexter. However, it’s not just any kind of tagging, it’s dynamic tagging across content-types.

Community Challenge: Let's Finance GNOME!

alice.grevet@opensourcematters.org (Alice Grevet) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:42:19 +0000

Last week the opportunity to support women in tech was presented in a blog entitled Joomla & GNOME Partner Up for an Internship for Women.

On behalf of the Joomla project, the board of Open Source Matters, Inc., pledges to match, dollar for dollar, the total amount raised by community sponsors. If enough sponsors step up to fund $5700 to cover one internship, the project will fund a second internship.

As of today's date, $300 have been raised.

Let’s see what we can do together! We have until May 1 to take a stand with Joomla to encourage more women in computing!

Become a Sponsor!

We are looking for community sponsors who could donate towards the internship fund since GNOME requires $5,000 stipend for each internship, as well as $500 travel allowance, and $200 administration fee. (The administrative fee will be used to cover intern payments transfer fees and to expand the resources of the GNOME Foundations needed for growing the program.) Our goal is to raise enough money for two internships.

Organizations that sponsor will be able to have their logo listed on the GNOME website and the Joomla landing page for this initiative.

To Donate:

Please contact Sandra Ordonez, who serves on the Open Source Matters board, at sandy.ordonez@opensourcematters.org

To Apply:

Make sure to read up on the GNOME program: https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen
You must contribute code to GitHub as part of the application process.
Send your cover letter, resume, and link to any code to sandy.ordonez@opensourcematters.org

Joomla & GNOME Partner up for an Internship for Women

sandra.ordonez@opensourcematters.org (Sandy Ordonez) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:23:12 +0000

Supporting diversity is an important tenet for Joomla leadership to uphold. Not only does it improve the quality of work coming out of our project, but as leaders in the Open Source space, it is important that we lead by example. This is particularly true, considering the currently low numbers of women in Open Source, which according to a well-cited study by UCAM at the University of Cambridge, is only 2%

Let me repeat that again: 2% of individuals in Open Source are women. While it is true that the Joomla community seems to be an organic leader in this regard, in that our events and leadership teams are comprised of more than 2% women, we still have a lot of work to do in this area, particularly when it comes to coding. Like most other projects, the percentage of women coders is quite low.

As a result of these and other reasons, the Joomla project will be taking part in GNOME Outreach Program for Women. The program was inspired in many ways by Google Summer of Code, and by how few women applied for it in the past. The program is also backed by the Software Freedom Conservancy, and has attracted the participation of many well known Open Source projects.

We are Looking for Sponsors!

We are also looking for community sponsors who could donate towards the internship fund since GNOME requires $5,000 stipend for each internship, as well as $500 travel allowance, and $200 administration fee. (The administrative fee will be used to cover intern payments transfer fees and to expand the resources of the GNOME Foundations needed for growing the program.) Our goal is to raise enough money for two internships.

Organizations that sponsor will be able to have their logo listed on the GNOME website and the Joomla landing page for this initiative.

To Donate:

Please contact Sandra Ordonez, who serves on the Open Source Matters board, at sandy.ordonez@opensourcematters.org

To Apply:

1) Make sure to read up on the GNOME program: https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen

2) You must contribute code to GitHub as part of the application process. https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen

3) Send your cover letter, resume, and link to any code to sandy.ordonez@opensourcematters.org

The JED index.html Requirement Dropped

matt@natselection.com (Matthew Baylor) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 04:57:27 +0000

Effective April 1, 2013 the Joomla Extensions Directory will drop the requirement for index.html files in all folders.

Why the change?

The rule is obsolete and has not been an effective ‘security' measure for a long time. You can read more about it here: http://www.dionysopoulos.me/blog/86-the-files-of-wrath.html

The #1 error with extensions submitted to be listed in the JED is SE1 (missing index.html files) which significantly slows down the approval process for everyone. Once the error is flagged, the developer has to fix it and then we have to re-screen it. The whole process gets unnecessarily long.

Once we approve an extension for listing it’s generally not checked again, unless there’s an issue reported. It’s quite common for a developer to update his/her extension and miss a few index.html files which will go unnoticed anyway.

What is the alternative?

Check with your hosting providers to see if they have directory traversal disabled.

Utilize the .htaccess / web.config file to prevent directory traversal.

http://docs.joomla.org/How_do_you_convert_an_htaccess.txt_file_into_a_.htaccess_file%3F

http://docs.joomla.org/Htaccess_examples_%28security%29

You can comment on this blog post here.

Joomla! 3.1.0 to Release on April 24

mark.dexter@community.joomla.org (Mark Dexter) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:48:44 +0000

Joomla version 3.1.0 will be released on April 24. This will give us a little more time to test and fine-tune the exciting new tagging feature and also to fix some other unrelated issues.

Version 3.1.0_beta3 will be released on March 29. This will have the same feature set as the final 3.1.0 release. We encourage people to download and try the beta version and provide feedback.

The Tags component will be a great addition to Joomla. It addresses the tagging, labelling, and multi-category requests that have been made over the years. For example, “assign multiple categories to an article” is currently ranked #7 on the ideas.joomla.org site. Tags will address that by allowing you to create lists, blogs, or other layouts that combine articles and other content types any way you like.

An amazing number of people have been contributing to version 3.1, both with coding and testing. For example, over 50 people have helped test and fix bugs just in the past 90 days. If you want to get involved, please consider joining the Joomla Bug Squad.

Note: The above date was updated form April 15th to April 24th. Things are going well, but we just wanted to make sure we're 100% ready and there are a few issues remaining that we want to take care of without rushing it.

Community Development Manager: Status Update

david.hurley@joomla.org (David Hurley) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 02:19:44 +0000

As this is my initial public blog post I’d like to say “Hello and it’s nice to meet you!” I’m David Hurley and in case you’ve not seen the previous posts, I am the Community Development Manager for Joomla. I’ve worked with Joomla since before it was Joomla and have had opportunity to continue to develop in Joomla for many years. If you are interested in more of my bio, you can check out the official appointment post below (or ask me). But for now I’d like to move on to the good stuff. Over the last few days, I’ve had the opportunity to hear from a couple of great people wondering a bit more about what my role involves and what I’ve been able to work on so far. I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to provide a status report of sorts regarding how things are progressing, what’s been accomplished, and how excited I am about the future.

Community Leadership Team Goals for 2013

sander.potjer@community.joomla.org (Sander Potjer) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:30:00 +0000

The goals of the Community Leadership Team (CLT) for 2013 are published below.

Goal A: Launch Joomla Volunteers portal

In 2013 we are are planning to launch a new Joomla Volunteers portal to make it easier to contribute to the Joomla community and track the progress of projects that people are working on. Part of this idea is to create a public marketplace to match skills, interests and available time of volunteers with the available project tasks. This also allows to thank the people involved within the Joomla project.

Goal B: Update community.joomla.org

The community.joomla.org site is using Joomla 1.5 and needs to be migrated to a recent Joomla version. Together with this migration the content needs to be reorganized and improved. The website should provide a complete overview of all news available around the Joomla project.

Goal C: Update extensions.joomla.org

The Joomla Extensions Directory (JED) has grown a lot over the past years and the current structure doesn't fulfill all the needs anymore. In 2013, we are planning to release a new version of the JED with improvements for the end users, listing owners and the JED maintainers. This new version will be custom made to match the needs of the JED. The JED team started to work on this already.

2013 overall project goals

paul.orwig@community.joomla.org (Paul Orwig) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 17:12:22 +0000

One of the agreements reached at the May 2012 leadership summit was to form an overall project goals and strategy working group. This working group includes members from each of Joomla's leadership teams: Chris Davenport (Production Leadership Team), Olaf Offick (Community Leadership Team), and Paul Orwig (Open Source Matters).

The purpose of this new working group is to work with the project's leadership and help define a three year vision statement for the project along with a set of one year overall project goals, and then to support the formation of working groups that will work on the different overall project goals.

Proposed governance change: dissolving the Community Oversight Committee

paul.orwig@community.joomla.org (Paul Orwig) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:43:14 +0000

In December of 2012, the Community Oversight Committee (COC) notified the board of Open Source Matters (OSM) that they had started the process to dissolve their committee. That process included consulting with an attorney experienced in such matters who could draft the necessary changes to the OSM by-laws. The COC also asked for feedback from OSM board members regarding if they agreed or disagreed with this proposed change.

In February of 2013, the COC notified OSM that they had voted unanimously to dissolve their committee. They also shared a set of revisions to the OSM by-laws to reflect this proposed change that were written by the previously contacted attorney.

Two new members for Community Leadership Team

peter.martin@forum.joomla.org (Peter Martin) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 22:07:17 +0000

Some time ago we asked the community to nominate candidates for the Community Leadership Team. From all those nominations we selected a few people for interviews and asked two of them to join the CLT. We would like to thank all of the candidates for their time & responses, as well as the Joomla Community for the many excellent suggestions.

Here are our two new CLT members and their backgrounds:

2013 Production Goals Published

michael.babker@joomla.org (Michael Babker) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:30:00 +0000

The Production Leadership Team (PLT) is pleased to announce that it has published its production goals for 2013. These goals are based on feedback from the Joomla! Community and areas that the PLT have identified as places we wish to focus and improve upon. The goals have been published on the Joomla! Developer network at http://developer.joomla.org/news/552-production-goals-for-2013.html.

OSM 2012 Actual to Budget Review

thomas.hampton@opensourcematters.org (Thomas Hampton) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

One of the primary roles of Open Source Matters (OSM) is to manage financial matters for the Joomla! project. It is our role to make sure that the project is financially secure and able to support the Joomla! community. The numbers below are a high level breakdown of OSM's 2012 actual finances compared to the 2012 Budget, along with some thoughts on what this all means to you as a member of the Joomla! community.

Open Source Matters Fourth Quarter Goals Update

paul.orwig@community.joomla.org (Paul Orwig) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The final part of the 2012 goal setting/budget planning process suggests that each leadership team publish quarterly updates on progress for each of their major goals. Following through on this part of the process is important-it promotes increased openness and transparency, it strengthens accountability and trust between the project's leadership and the community, and it recognizes the volunteer contributors who are the most important resource for our project's continued growth and success.

This post gives a summary of progress that was made during the fourth quarter for Open Source Matters' (OSM) four major 2012 goals, along with the names of key contributors for each of the items. Sincerest thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the progress that was made on these goals during the fourth quarter!

Here are blogs summarizing OSM quarterly goal updates from earlier this year:

OSM will publish updates for our 2013 goals. Look for another blog with our First Quarter 2013 updates to hopefully be published by early May 2013.

Simplify Trademark rules and team processes

The board commissioned, and received a Trademark policy review proposal that has as it’s aims:
- To allow proper community use, while preventing abuse or fraudulent use.
- Keep control of the mark, and retain discretion to end or stop offending use.
- Shorten the time-frame for trademark decision-making.
- Increase uniformity of access to the trademark, while reducing resources devoted to trademarks, both for OSM and the community.
At the board summit meeting, before the Joomla! World Conference in San Jose, the board discussed the proposal.

Reduce communication channels and improve public facing communications processes

At the board meeting in San Jose in November, Dianne Henning, Sandy Ordonez and Alice Grevet committed to working together to help move communications along in 2013.
They have begun preliminary discussions on ideas that include:
- Create a curated blog/portal with project information targeting news/media groups and those not acquainted with Joomla
- Create a curated blog/portal with project information targeting the initiated Joomla community
- Create a beginner's roadmap to help community members find information and become involved
As soon as the joint leadership goals are approved in early 2013, these members look forward to working with members of CLT and PLT in a working group to bring these ideas, or similar ones, to fruition in a common vision that helps all teams meet their communications goals.
Public Relation Initiatives (Sandra Ordonez)
- Drafted and distributed 36 million downloads release and conducted media relations
- Secured interview with Rob Mitchell of Computerworld regarding Joomla! Users, Jack Germain of ECT News Network, and CMS Wire.
- Reached out to major publication regarding a negative story about earlier versions of Joomla, and drafted statement used to help counter it.

Research and implement plan to increase sponsorship income by $20,000 from 2011

Reached agreements with two Global Platinum Sponsors (Mike Carson, Paul Orwig)
Capital Committee team development was initiated and 4 members were added with plans to add additional persons in the 1st quarter of 2013.
Planning stages of a new sponsors and partners website was initiated for a development and release date of the end of the first quarter of 2013.

Launch first Joomla! World Conference and improve support for Joomla! Days

Joomla World Conference took place November 16-18 (JWC team)

Work on other OSM led initiatives

While the primary focus for this blog is on progress made during the fourth quarter on OSM's four major 2012 goals, work has also been underway on a number of other important OSM led initiatives. Here is a list of some of these other initiatives, along with the OSM board members who worked on them during the first quarter:

Moving forward on plans for Joomla certification program (Leonel Canton, Ofer Cohen, Sarah Watz)
Expand focus of new OSM Project Manager role (Ofer Cohen)
Work on transition of Joomla shop to OSM Capital team (Dianne Henning).
Improve multi-language support for Joomla software and OSM website (Marijke Stuivenberg, Jacques Rentzke, Radek Suski).
Improve support for different aspects of internationalization (Marijke Stuivenberg, Javier Gomez, Paulo Griiettner).
Coordinate improvements to the free demo program (Marijke Stuivenberg).

Please join the OSM Fourth Quarter 2012 Goal Updates discussion and share your questions and comments.

JED 1.5 Version Support Ends

matt@natselection.com (Matthew Baylor) — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:03:31 +0000

As planned back in April 2012, the JED will begin the transition of dropping support for Joomla 1.5 only extensions.

The 1.5 timeline

April 1, 2012: we no longer accepted 1.5 only submissions.
February 15, 2013: the 1.5 compatibility icon will be disabled for new submissions.
March 1, 2013: We will begin unpublishing listings that are marked as Joomla 1.5 only and remove the 1.5 icons. After a 1.5 only listing is unpublished developers will have 14 days to update the unpublished listing with a 2.5 and/or 3.0 version. Once updated a support ticket will need to be opened to get the listing republished.
March 15, 2013: all non-compatible listings will be purged from the system. Once a listing is purged, to get the extension listed again, it will need to be submitted as new.

Some current numbers

4,425 listings are marked as Joomla 1.5 only
6,518 listings are marked as Joomla 2.5 compatible
1,994 listings are marked as Joomla 3.0 compatible

Where can I find 1.5 extensions after March?

There have been some requests of creating a repository for 1.5 listings. With our current workload and projects on the horizon we do not have the manpower to create a repository at this time.

We will pull an archive of the site prior to removing any 1.5 listings and make it available for anyone who would like to put a repository together.

Once our 3.0 migration project is complete we will revisit the possibility of creating a 1.5 listing repository.

A repository/acrhive has been created and is available at http://archive.extensions.joomla.org

You can comment on this blog post here.

Open Call For Capital Committee Team Applicants

mike.carson@community.joomla.org (Mike Carson) — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 15:15:16 +0000

The Capital Committee Team of Open Source Matters is looking for additional candidates to join our existing team. We are looking to expand our current team to meet the increased goals and ambitions of Open Source Matters to financially support the Joomla! Project, Joomla! Events, and other Joomla community initiatives.
What is the Capital Committee?

What does the Capital Committee do?

The OSM Capital Committee Team is responsible for all sponsorship and fundraising activities for the Joomla! Project. The OSM Capital Committee Team builds strategies for encouraging growth in sponsorships, builds targets for each year’s sponsorship revenues, and provides regular reports to the Open Source Matters Board on the activities of the Capital Committee.

Responsibilities and Tasks include:

Management and Review of the Project’s Sponsorship Opportunities.
Creation and Completion of Sponsorship Contracts.
Recruitment and communications with new and potential sponsors.
Maintenance of existing sponsors.
Maintenance of a new sponsors website and tools.

PLT Names Three New Members

nick@iowawebcompany.com (Nick Savov) — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:15:16 +0000

The Joomla! Production Leadership Team (PLT) is pleased to announce the addition of three new members: Andrew Eddie, Javier Gomez and Tom Hutchison.

The PLT is responsible for leading and coordinating the development of the Joomla! CMS and the Joomla! Platform. This includes releasing new versions, fixing bugs, adding new features and creating documentation.

In December 2012, the PLT announced that they were seeking nominations from the community for several new members to join the team. Many excellent candidates were nominated and the PLT would like to thank all those who participated in the nomination process. Our new members will strengthen the team in such areas as software architecture, internationalisation and documentation.

Andrew Eddie hardly needs any introduction as he was one of the co-founders of Joomla! and has held almost all positions it has been possible to hold in the project at one time or another, including the PLT. He has also been one of the primary software engineers for the Joomla! project since its inception and has contributed in a wide range of areas within the project. He currently serves as one of the Platform Maintainers of Joomla!, which ensure quality control, maintenance and security of the Joomla! Platform.

Andrew brings his huge wealth of experience to the PLT, particularly in the area of software architecture and design. Andrew is Principal Software Engineer at eBay and is based in Australia.

Javier Gomez lives in Barcelona (Spain) and works as IT consultant and freelance programmer. He became active in the community in 2007 by organizing the first national Joomla! meeting in Barcelona and has participated in many other Joomla! events (Ecuador, Chile, Cuba, United States, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, The Netherlands, Germany). He is passionate about the Joomla! community!

In 2010 Javier became a board member of Open Source Matters (OSM), the not-for-profit international organization that provides legal, financial and organizational support to the Joomla! project. He has been focused on improving the internationalization of Joomla!. He participated, as a student, in the Google Summer of Code Program 2012 and contributed the Language Installer tool to the CMS. Javier joins the Joomla! Production Leadership Team (PLT) in 2013, with the purpose of working towards a better CMS and a better Platform and strengthening the leadership team and the PLT processes.

Tom Hutchison started using Joomla! in early 2009 building a website for his hobby, genetic genealogy. From the start, he loved the fact Joomla! is easy to maintain by multiple administrators with various skill levels and easily extensible. One website led to another, then a few more, followed by a few for others in the hobby. In the summer of 2012, after looking for development information on the Joomla! Docs Wiki, he volunteered to help improve the Docs Wiki as the first “go to” resource for Joomla! users of all levels.

Even though Tom studied Information Technology in college, he’s been his own boss since 1996 designing and building custom furniture and built-in cabinets for clients. He never really stopped working with computers. In his spare time he is the webmaster of 5 Joomla! websites, 2 Mediawiki websites, developing another Joomla! website, and yet another website using Semantic-Mediawiki.

With the addition of Andrew Eddie, Javier Gomez and Tom Hutchison, this brings the total PLT members to nine:

Andrea Tarr
Andrew Eddie
Chris Davenport
Javier Gomez
Mark Dexter
Michael Babker
Nick Savov
Ron Severdia
Tom Hutchison

If you have any questions or would like to congratulate the new members, you can do so at the following forum discussion:
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=704&t=785392

Call For Joomla! Community Leadership Team Nominations

peter.martin@forum.joomla.org (Peter Martin) — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 16:49:00 +0000

The Joomla! Community Leadership Team (CLT) is currently looking for new active members from the Joomla community to strengthen our team. If you know a fellow Joomla community member who is active in the Joomla.org or in a local Joomla community, and who would be available & suitable for the position, please nominate them. You can also nominate yourself. Please keep in mind that this is *not* a voting contest: asking all your acquaintances to nominate or vote for you, certainly doesn't give you any bonus points :-)

What is the CLT?

The Community Leadership Team (CLT) is the leadership arm of the project responsible for the Community Workgroup (CWG). The Community Workgroup (CWG) consists of certain sites/areas where hundreds of volunteers help out:

Joomla Community Magazine (JCM), magazine.joomla.org
Joomla Community Portal (Community site), community.joomla.org
Joomla Extension Directory (JED), extensions.joomla.org
Joomla Forum (Forum), forum.joomla.org
Joomla Resources Directory (JRD), resources.joomla.org
Joomla Template (JTD), templates.joomla.org (under construction)
Joomla User Groups (JUG), community.joomla.org/user-groups.html
The Joomla Project main site www.joomla.org

It's Official – Joomla! CMS to Add 3.2 Release

mark.dexter@community.joomla.org (Mark Dexter) — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 23:42:06 +0000

After much public discussion over several months, the Joomla Production Leadership Team (PLT) has made it official. We will release version 3.2 in September 2013 and move the 3.5 release to March 2014. This pattern is expected to continue for the version 4.x releases.

Now, version 2.5 will be the current long-term support (LTS) release for two years (March 2012 to March 2014) instead of 18 months. Here is the revised release schedule through version 4.5.

Version 2.5: March 2012 (LTS release)
Version 3.0: September 2012
Version 3.1: March 2013
Version 3.2: September 2013
Version 3.5: March 2014 (LTS release)
Version 4.0: September 2014
Version 4.1: March 2015
Version 4.2: September 2015
Version 4.5: March 2016 (LTS release)

In discussions on list and at several Joomla events, the response to this proposal was very positive. The PLT believes this change preserves the advantages of the 6-month release cycle while giving LTS users a longer time between major upgrades. Like any prediction of the future, it is subject to change (for example, if the world ends, people stop using the internet, or someone proposes a better plan).

Happy holidays, and may all your upgrades go smoothly!

OSM Draft Goals for 2013

paul.orwig@community.joomla.org (Paul Orwig) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

During the joint leadership summit meeting in San Jose, California on November 15, 2012, one item that members of Joomla's Production Leadership Team (PLT), Community Leadership Team (CLT) and Open Source Matters (OSM) agreed on was to try and finalize their 2013 team level goals by December 31, 2012.

OSM's draft goals for 2013 are published below. Our next step in the goal setting process is to invite feedback from the community. Please share your questions and comments in this forum thread about OSM's 2013 draft goals.

Beginning December 21, 2012, OSM board members will begin finalizing these 2013 goals, taking into account feedback from the community.

Communications

Improve communications through simplifying and targeting communications channels for external as well as internal audiences, and facilitate volunteer involvement.

Create a curated blog/portal with project information targeting news/media groups and those not acquainted with Joomla
Create a curated blog/portal with project information targeting the initiated Joomla community
Create a beginner's roadmap to help community members find information and become involved

Capital

Develop new sponsors.joomla.org website
Increase incoming sponsorship money of project by at least 50% ($150,000.00)
Acquire a Global Event Sponsorship for 2013 sponsor
Student scholarship program for events admissions, etc.
Implement a hosting directory of approved partner hosting companies
Free hosting for life concept - exploring options, structure and RFP development
Get a documented and structured ad program in place

Internationalization

Improve processes for translating the Joomla Software and supporting the enhancement of the Joomla CMS multilingual system
Internationalize and translate the family of Joomla sites including localized documentation and help screens
Reach out to and build better relationships with local communities

Events

Turn Joomla Events into a Marketing Tool to attract new users
Send at least one leadership team member to every JoomlaDay
Create a "JoomlaDay Tool Box"
Participate at selected other events that are not related to Joomla
Start to organize Joomla Regional Conferences
Plan and launch the 2013 Joomla World Conference (JWC)

Certification

The main goal is to get the Joomla Certification Program launched during 2013. The Joomla certification program will go beyond training by providing a documented measurement of knowledge, so that Joomla professionals can compete under equal conditions world wide.

Trademark, Licence and Legal

Trademark Review Process

The main goal remains to complete the Trademark review process so that our Trademark rules are easy to understand and to follow, and also simpler to administer. The following steps need to be completed to achieve this:

Complete the Trademark review process with legal assistance. (target date to finish this is end of January 2013)

The next items in full or in part depends on this first point to be completed:

Finish new Trademark & Licence site.
New Trademark submission forms and new process
Refresh of logos
Quick checklist for submissions
Translating of parts or most of Trademark information. (can commence once above points is done)
Better process and communication regarding Trademark matters between teams
Expand the Trademark team and organize into more defined roles for each member
Train up new Trademark team lead or facilitate transition to professional lead

Licensing and internal Trademark requests

The goal is to have clear guidelines, and clear communication channels, so that any Licensing or Trademark concern or question can be addressed before it becomes an issue, and that we get speedy replies to those type of question. The following steps will help reach this goal:

Review code contribution process as it relates to licenses and Contributor Agreements
Provide clear guidelines to all teams on what type of matters would first need to have Trademark or License questions resolved. (HelpDesk may be useful to manage these requests)

Legal, Agreements and Contracts

The goal is to keep within our conservative budget spending for legal matters. Such spending could be increased on short notice in case of an urgent legal matter, and by approval of the board.

Governance

Form a standing working group that will produce a set of governance improvement recommendations intended for review and consideration by the project's leadership.