24 May 2004
Boost for open source as Plone Foundation launches
Computer Associates becomes first corporate sponsor with announcement at CA World
The Open Source Plone Community has today announced the formation of the Plone Foundation, an organisation committed to providing high quality open source software products focused around the Plone content management system. The Foundation also announced major industry backing with the news that Computer Associates has become its first corporate sponsor.
Plone is the leading Open Source Content Management solution with a strong focus on usability, standards, internationalisation and accessibility. The Foundation will provide development, marketing, and financial support for Plone and related projects. This support comes as Plone is developing critical mass as the most popular and powerful open source content management system.
"We have been using Plone successfully in commercial environments for years and watched it grow from strength to strength," commented Matt Hamilton, UK director of the Plone Foundation and Technical Director of Netsight Internet Solutions Ltd. "I am very excited about the Foundation as it will provide a bigger commercial voice for the community, giving us the backing to show the capabilities of Plone to organisations that have typically not considered Open Source CMS solutions."
"The Plone Foundation will further drive collaborative, open source development within the broader global Linux community," said Sam Greenblatt, Senior Vice President and Chief Architect of CA's Linux Technology Group. "CA will contribute code and a dedicated team of engineers to the Plone Foundation to enhance and improve Plone so that both the community and commercial customers achieve benefit from the all the skill and creativity being exercised in the marketplace."
Commenting at CAWORLD in Las Vegas this week, CA also announced its support for the underlying technology framework of Plone, the Zope Open Source platform:
"CA is prepared to commit significant development resources to Zope technology. By applying its enterprise management expertise to Zope's acclaimed content management platform, CA will enable customers to more effectively integrate and scale Zope-based solutions to meet evolving business requirements."
Although the Foundation will provide oversight for all Plone activities, the technical aspects of each project will continue to be governed by each project team. The Foundation is based on the successful Apache Software Foundation with a board of directors from the Plone community, Plone developers and industry leaders.
The Plone Foundation has established a founding board of directors which will be responsible for the execution of the Foundation's charter. The board is made up of long-standing supporters and contributors to Plone and other open source products. Members of the board include:
- Alan Runyan, Enfold Systems (USA) - President
- Alexander Limi, Plone Solutions (Norway) - Vice President
- Matt Hamilton, Netsight (United Kingdom) - Treasurer
- Geoff Davis, Independent (USA) - Secretary
- Robert Boulanger, Blue Dynamics (Germany)
- Bernard Bühlmann, 4teamwork (Switzerland)
- Mark Murphy, Tyrell Corp. (USA)
- Mark Barrenechea, Computer Associates (USA)
- Sam Greenblatt, Computer Associates (USA)
The members will represent those organisations and individual developers who have contributed significantly to the development or marketing of Plone.
About The Plone Foundation
The Plone Foundation provides organisational, legal, marketing, and financial support for the Plone open source software projects. The Foundation is incorporated as a membership-based, not-for-profit corporation to ensure that the Plone projects continue to exist beyond the participation of individual volunteers, to enable contributions of intellectual property and financial support, and to provide a vehicle for limiting legal exposure while participating in open-source projects. For more information on the Plone Foundation, please visit http://plone.org/foundation.
About Plone
Plone is the leading Open Source Content Management solution with a strong focus on usability, standards, internationalisation and accessibility. Plone is technology neutral, and runs on Linux, Windows, Solaris, Mac OS X and other platforms. For more information about Plone, please visit http://plone.org.