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Plone Solutions co-founder takes new job at Google -- updated

3-Aug-2006

Tags: Portals and Content Integration, Web Content Management, Marketplace at Large, Selecting Technology, Plone

The popular open source CMS and portal Plone has seen one of it forceful leaders take a new job at Google. According to recent news Alexander Limi is taking on a new position as User Interface Designer at Google. Limi has been important to the Plone community as one of the roadmap setters. Limi will no longer consult day-to-day with his commercial services firm Plone Solutions, but will remain on the board. The community is obviously bigger than Limi, and the Plone Foundation will continue handling the development, marketing and legal affairs of Plone. CMS Report co-author and open source expert Seth Gottlieb offers his view. A mature open-source platform -- CMS or portal -- should be able to flourish independently of few key individuals. We know several such platforms that remain personality-driven. The coming months and years will show how Plone will be affected by Limi now working at a major commercial software company. [Update, August 3: Limi points out that he will stay active in the Plone community and continue to work on the project one day a week at Google. We regret suggesting otherwise. Google does indeed maintain good relationships with various open source projects. Still, it will be interesting to see whether and how Google and Plone's interests diverge over the coming years. Try googling "content management" and note the first paid ad at the top of the results...]

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