Happy New Year to you all.

Of course I'm not really so sad as to be sat typing this blog post at midnight on New Years Day. It's actualy 15:53 on the 29th and I'm using the "Start Publishing" feature of joomla.

This has to be one of the most underused or misunderstood features of joomla. Actualy I only say that because so many web sites have outdated information on their front pages. Information that they knew at the time of writing would be out of date at a specific time and date.

For news on important events I regularly end up creating three articles at once.

Now no matter how drunk I get at the party I know the website is up to date and I can upload the photos and edit the "What a success" article when I am more sober.

Of course you could just make a note in your diary to update the website first thing on the morning of the 9th but you can guarantee that the one person you wouldn't want to see the outdated content is the only person who does see it.

As the year ends rather than look backwards at what has happened in the past it's time to look forward to what will happen in the coming year.

Here are my Top 10 Predictions for 2009 (in no particular order). I'd be interested to hear yours.

1. Joomla 1.6 will be released on 1st April
2. joomla truly makes inroads into the enterprise market with ACL, revision management and shared calendars
   
3. twitter will flutter away
4. usability will finally be taken seriously by joomla with a completely redesigned administrator interface
5. increased Internet speeds will result to increased vlogging
6. the backlash against google begins with greater acknowledgement of the privacy issues
7. Internet Explorer 8 is released on 1st June and the first security fix is released on 2nd June
8. a new cms is launched that seriously challenges joomla and drupal
9. mambo has it's last dance
10. I stop smoking

Not sure about the last one but I was running out of ideas.

I never thought I would find myself agreeing with Richard M Stallman but today I do.

Free Software and Open Source Software are not the same.

At first glance they might appear to be but on closer inspection there are some subtle and important differences. Before you start debating the merits of a software licence etc it's important to use the correct terminology.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is "a nonprofit with the mission of advocating and educating on behalf of computer users around the world."

Whilst the Open Source Initiative (OSI) "is a non-profit corporation formed to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open-source community."

Do you see the difference?

The FSF is a political movement campaigning "for free software adoption and against proprietary software" by "fighting for essential freedoms for computer users"  but the OSI only concerns itself in promoting the use of open source software.

"Please avoid using the term “open” or “open source” as a substitute for “free software”. They refer to a different position based on different values. Free software is a political movement; open source is a development model. When referring to the open source position, using its name is appropriate; but please don't label us or our work with its slogan—that leads people to think we share those views." extracted from here.

"Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users' freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the free software movement, however, non-free software is a social problem, and moving to free software is the solution." extracted from here

This can also be seen by the FSF's current list of campaigns that there is more to Free Software than just the GNU/GPL Licence.

That's why personally I am an Open Source advocate and not a Free Software advocate and why I was a founder of Open Source Matters Inc. and not a founder of Free Software Matters Inc.

Further Reading

• The Free Software Definition
• The Open Source Definition
  

Today the Joomla project made an announcement that sets itself apart from both it's users and the GNU GPL Licence that it stands behind.

Joomla is released under version 2 (not version 2.1 as the announcement says) of the GNU GPL Licence but it includes numerous pieces of code released under other licences. However the "joomla community" has apparently decided that extension developers do not have the same freedom.

From the latest licences.php file we can see that "Joomla! includes or is derivative of works distributed under the licenses listed below."

* BSD License
* GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU LGPL) version 2.1
* MIT License
* PHP License version 3.0

The fact that the PHP Licence itself is not compatible with the GNU GPL Licence itself is a different issue and one for another time.

The Free Software Foundation list numerous licences as being GPL compatible so if it is good enough for Joomla and the Free Software Foundation why is it not good enough for the Joomla Extensions Directory?