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OSM bylaw changes regarding oversight
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.
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Joomla! 3.1 - Dynamic Tagging Across Content Types
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.
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Community Challenge: Let's Finance GNOME!
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:
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
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Joomla & GNOME Partner up for an Internship for Women
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
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The JED index.html Requirement Dropped
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
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