Open Source Matters is the non-profit organization which was formed to manage the legal, financial, and trademark related matters for the Joomla! project. In this issue's Leadership connections article from Open Source Matters, OSM board member Steve Burge shares some of the work that OSM has been doing during July on behalf of the Joomla! project.

Thank You to Elin and Dave

It is with sadness that we announced the resignations of Elin Waring and Dave Huelsmann from the Open Source Matters (OSM) board in mid-July. Elin and Dave worked successfully in many parts of the project. We wish them both all the very best in their future endeavors and thank them for their years of dedicated service. Elin was interviewed in depth for this month's issue of the Joomla Community Magazine.

Looking for New Board Members

Open Source Matters bears a lot of responsibility within the Joomla! project. To help us fulfil our duties, we will be looking for new board members in the months to come. When the last round of elections was held earlier this year, the process seemed to generate positive responses from the community. The Community Oversight Committee asked for nominations, thanked the people who made nominations with the alloted timeframe, researched the candidates and the announced the names of those who were chosen. Look for a similar process to start shortly.

New Positions

In the June roundup I mentioned that Ryan Ozimek, the President of OSM, had appointed three board members to new positions. This month each member really started to make progress in their particular area:

President:

• Ryan has been working on a strong documentation effort to bring more information to light for the board and community.
• He's also leading the effort for organizational development of the Board with a consultant (pro-bono).

Events:

• Robert has been also working hard on Joomla! Day approval requests.
• The old approval form has been dropped in favor of an interim solution using Google Docs.

Trademark:

• Marko, with outstanding help from people such as Claire Mandville, has nearly cleared the domain approval backlog
• Next will be a reorganization of the whole trademark team and it's procedures.
• Major tasks will be the recruitment of new members and co-ordinating more closely with the Joomla! User Group team.

Community:

• That’s me. We're asking for your feedback on creating a clear and compelling message to promote Joomla!.
• We wrote 21 blogs on https://community.joomla.org this month, covering a wide variety of topics including Joomla!'s 5th birthday, large sites using Joomla! and plenty of information on the upcoming release of 1.6.
• We've just about wrapped up an effort to improve Joomla!'s presence on both Facebook and Twitter