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Joomla! 1.5 Beta-2 — The Developers' and Designers' Revolution! |
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Joomla! proudly presents its most important coding adrenaline surge
to the development and designer community. With today's release of
Joomla! 1.5 Beta-2, we're shifting gears into turbo mode; an entirely
re-factored core, internationalisation, FTP layering, next-generation
API and framework that's so flexible and powerful and, of course, a
designer's dream for unparalleled templating flexibility.
The Red Barchetta — Beta-2 We've
dubbed Beta-2 'Red Barchetta', in keeping with the spirit of freedom,
power, simplicity and flexibility unknown in an Open Source framework.
Besides Red Barchetta conjuring up triumph through coding revolution,
this baby provides developers and designers with unequaled tools. This
makes Joomla! 1.5 Beta-2 the ultimate enabler for your projects. Now
is the time for you to take it for a serious
drive to help our team refine the software for our release candidate
goals. It's also probably the best time for you to start learning the
nuances of the new system to enable you to migrate your extensions and
templates to the next generation CMS.
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Building a Stronger Community |
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The Joomla! Core Team takes this opportunity to
announce it will be holding a Core Team Summit prior to the Joomla!Day
USA (West), at the Googleplex, in California. Meeting over three days,
both the core team and the Open Source Matters Board of Directors will be tackling many issues pertaining to the future of Joomla!
Intensive workshops will be undertaken by a professional facilitator,
to provide a vehicle for ideas and issues to be openly discussed and
thrashed out if necessary. Most recently, discussion about GPL and commercial extensions
has fuelled heartfelt debate on the forums. The Joomla! Core Team and
Open Source Matters Board of Directors invites those interested in
having their thoughts, concerns, and ideas floated at the Summit to
write to
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
 This
allows all interested parties to fully explain how they would like to
see the Joomla! 1.5 framework and its relationship with third party
developers function in the future. We have endeavoured to let everyone
have a voice by letting the thread run on the forums. As is the nature
of forums, flames and inaccurate information abound. The
Joomla! Core Team recognises the wonderful impact third party
developers have had in our community, and we're looking forward to
helping the community find the right legal path to continue this unique
aspect of our community. With the great advent of Joomla! 1.5, we are
seeking to ensure from the outset that Joomla! 1.5 stands on a solid
legal footing, and we're looking forward to exploring this in more
depth to continue to support our community.
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Open Source Does Matter ... |
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It is a great news. Joomla! is moving to
ensure the future of the project by committing to compliance with the
GNU/GPL license. This decision reflects a lengthy introspection
combined with legal considerations to properly secure the project in
the spirit of Open Source. For us, for everyone, Open Source does
matter.
It's a long, slow road. We're not going to make any
sudden moves because we know that a lot of people are relying on us to
maintain some stability and meet expectations. We are very much aware
that a lot of people make their living around Joomla!, and we are
sensitive to producing sudden disruptions in livelihoods.
Joomla!
is a unique project with unique needs and unique GPL issues. Solutions
won't just come off the shelf. There are solutions and compromises on
these issues that we are still exploring, and we want to keep hearing
from the community so we can get it right.
We will provide facts
as soon as we have them. If we seem too silent, it's because we don't
want to speak until we can do so clearly and confidently. And you'll
have plenty of notice before any large changes get made.
Here's
the plan: first, we clean our own house and bring the Joomla! sites
into compliance. Next, we ask people in the community to voluntarily
comply with the license. At the same time, we try to help people
understand what it takes to comply and how they can do it easily. We
believe we're going to get a lot of compliance that way.
So
far, that's the entire plan. No lawsuits, no pogroms, no martyrs. More
to the point, no shouting, no demonisation, and no drawing lines
between "us" and "them". It's a big community with many kinds of
developers, and we want solutions that will work for everybody.
Sticking with the GPL
We
have decided to stay with the license that made Joomla! possible.
Unanimously supported by the core team and supported by the Open Source
Matters board, this confirms that both Joomla! 1.0 and Joomla! 1.5 are
released under the (pure) GPL.
We've also decided that we do not
have the authority to publish Joomla! under a version of the GPL that
gives exceptions for proprietary extensions. It's difficult to
relicense a GPL'd project, and there is no indication that OSM
currently has that ability. Our current understanding is that
extensions that aren't released under the GPL or compatible licenses
are non-compliant, and that view is based on the guidance of both the
Free Software Foundation and the Software Freedom Law Center.
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Joomla! Events for August 2007 |
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After the exciting release
of the Joomla! 1.5 Release Candidate at the Joomla!Day in Austin Texas,
the team will further promote the new system at two more conferences and
exhibitions in August 2007.
Thailand Open Source Festival
During the 7th Thailand Open Source Software Festival (http://www.ossfestival.in.th/), to be held on August 2-3, 2007 at Bangkok Convention Center, 5th floor Central Plaza Lardpraow
Chatuchak, Alex Kempkens will speak about Joomla! and the reason why a
CMS is essential for Web 2.0. The conference which is supported by an
exhibition presents several Open Source solutions and projects.
The
focus of the talks will be how Open Source solutions can be used
within the company/office environment. More information can be found in our forum (http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,187294.0.html).
LinuxWorld San Francisco
The Linux World Expo in San Francisco (http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/live/12/events/12SFO07A)
has a very good reputation for the Joomla! project and Open Source in
general. Meet Joomla! core team members Louis Landry, Rob Schley and Johan Janssens from August 6-9, 2007 at
the Moscone Center San Francisco, CA. We are very proud that Joomla!
project manager Johan Janssens will speak at the conference. Johan will
introduce the audience to Joomla! with his session about: Understanding the Joomla Framework - Tips and Tricks From the Frontline (http://joomla.org/linuxworldexpo/talk.html) .
The session will cover several aspects of the new Joomla! Framework and
will give an overview of the different packages as well as explaining its usage with examples.
Finally we will demonstrate how you can easily
create completely new web applications based on the Framework in just a
few lines of code.
Does
this sound exciting? A must see session we would say! Important for
everybody wanting to meet the Joomla! team at the event. If
you sign up before the event (until the 5th of August) registration
is FREE (0,- US-$).
Check out the conference details at the linuxworldexpo.com (http://linuxworldexpo.com/live/12/TB296182/)
site. Visitors to the exhibition will have the opportunity to meet
Louis, Rob and some other special guests as well as other community
members. Check out the forum (http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,173664.0.html)
and show hands if you will be around to talk about the latest news
about the Joomla! project, your websites and everything else you like
to talk about.
Over
past years Joomla! has won some prestigious awards at the SF
LinuxWorld. With the release of Joomla! 1.5 we believe this takes the
project to a whole new level. The new framework is fast becoming
recognised as 'the next big thing' in open source technologies. 1.5 is
attracting some amazing new talent — with third-party developers and
architects wanting to achieve more than ever before with the Joomla!
1.0 series. These are most definitely THE
most exciting times of the Joomla! project, Johan said. We've put in
thousands of hours of development time creating this 'next generation
framework' and we feel its potential is only limited by people's
imaginations.
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Joomla Official News 
