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. Here is a high level breakdown of OSM's current finances compared to last year, along with some thoughts on what this all means to you as a member of the Joomla! community.
What Does The Future Hold?
These year-to-year comparisons indicate that the future looks bright for the Joomla! project’s finances.
1) The experiment of OSM hiring paid consultants to do development work for the Joomla! project has ended for now. That means one of our largest expenses will not be on the books in future months.
2) The project's legal expenses have been significantly reduced. While still protecting the Joomla! trademark, our legal expenses for this year are a 58% decrease compared to the same period last year:
2009 year to date legal invoices: $148,920
2010 year to date legal invoices: $62,603
Over the last six full months of 2010 (June through November), there were only $15,211 in invoiced legal expenses, which means this trend of reduced legal expenses is continuing.
3) We have multiple new income streams coming online such as the Joomla! Press (http://www.joomla.org/announcements/general-news/5298-joomla-press-titles-from-pearson.html), the Joomla! demo site (http://demo.joomla.org), as well as the ability to collect donations. We also have plans to improve and expand the offerings in the Joomla shop (http://shop.joomla.org/), and we are also looking at other ways to bring in more income from different areas of the joomla.org family of websites.
4) We are building a genuine Capital Committee that is dedicated to raising money for the Joomla! project. You can find out more and join in here:
http://community.joomla.org/blogs/community/1322-new-sponsorship-team.html
What Does This All Mean For You?
It means two things above all:
1) The project is on a path to stronger financial stability. Joomla!’s future is more secure because we have a growing financial safety net should it ever be needed.
2) We have more resources to support the community. Earlier this year, we had some cash flow challenges which led to us having to suspend our support of some Joomla! Days. We are now in a position to end that suspension. If you are running a Joomla! event or if you want to plan one, please send an email to eventsteam@opensourcematters.org and we'll do our very best to help you out.
How You Can Help
Here are some ideas on how you can contribute to the Joomla! project by helping to strengthen our finances:
1) Join the Capital Committee: http://community.joomla.org/blogs/community/1322-new-sponsorship-team.html
2) Sponsor Joomla!: http://opensourcematters.org/support-joomla.html
3) Point Joomla! users to the demo site and the Joomla! Press books when they're published.
4) Go and enjoy Joomla!. After all, that's why we're all here and working hard together in order to secure Joomla!'s future.
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Source: http://community.joomla.org
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