Plone celebrates its fifth year!

by Alexander Limi

October 05, 2006

Today marks exactly five years since the release of Plone 0.1, the very first Plone release.

It's hard to believe it has already been five years since Plone started. On October 4th, 2001, the first release of what has become one of the largest and most successful open source projects in the Content Management space was released.

A Texan and a Norwegian met online in the year 2000, sharing a passion for easy-to-use web applications and a dedication to perfection and standards — as well as frustrations with the existing solutions — and the rest, as they say, is history.

It's enlightening to look back at what has been accomplished over the last five years:

• Plone is one of the world's leading Web Content Management Systems, and has received numerous awards and recognitions of excellence throughout the years, from general trade publications to specific content management magazines.
• We've been to the depths of Las Vegas with O'Reilly, and to the top of the Austrian mountains using a satellite uplink to check in our code and do our releases. We arranged what was probably the first conference in post-Katrina New Orleans. The Plone All-Stars are unstoppable.
• The Plone Foundation was created in 2004, a non-profit organization to manage the Plone IP, code and trademarks, as well as a way to handle promotion and release announcements for Plone. It also secured the worldwide trademark rights last year.
• Plone is a well-established player in most sectors, all the way from small-scale NGOs and businesses to major educational institutions to major governments and corporations.
• Plone has grown from a two-man project to encompass over 100 contributors to the core application and over 500 developers for the third-party add-ons. Over 400 add-ons are available.
• Plone has become a global phenomenon, is published in more than 35 languages, and with more than 200 companies doing Plone development around the world.
• Five books about Plone have been published, in multiple languages.
• Plone helped Oxfam America raise $14 million dollars for the Tsunami disaster in Asia.
• There is an annual Plone Conference every year (join us this year in Seattle, Oct 25-27 [ http://plone.org/events/conferences/seattle-2006 ]), which draws ~300 participants.

We'd like to thank all the rock stars of the Ploniverse for making Plone what it is today! We could not wish for a crowd of more intelligent, productive, and hilarious people to work with. It's been an amazing ride so far, and things are really starting to take off in every possible direction.

Time flies when you have fun. :)

Three cheers for Plone! We will toast, drink and eat to you at the conference!

— Alexander Limi and Alan Runyan