Introducing the Magento Open Source Task Force
This spring, I kicked off a process with the Magento Association Board of Directors to define — in a very specific manner — what four areas we plan for the Magento Association to focus on in the coming months and years. In an upcoming article for Commerce Co-op I'll share the details of that process, and at our upcoming MA Connect event we'll be announcing the details of the focus areas themselves: what we're calling the Four Pillars of the Magento Association.
Very early in this process we all realized that the future of Magento Open Source had to be one of the four pillars, and we began evaluating how we could proceed with expanding our role concerning Magento Open Source. After conversations with various individuals in the community, within Adobe and involved in the Magento Association, we decided that we needed to develop a business plan and recommendation for the future of Magento Open Source. We have been learning more about how the Drupal Association and Acquia, the for-profit company managed by the owner of the Drupal trademark, cooperate together around Drupal's open source edition and Acquia's commercial cloud-based edition of Drupal.
Realizing that the Drupal/Acquia model is just one possible option and needing a group to determine other possible options, the Board put out a call for volunteers in August for our new Magento Open Source Task Force. This call was announced on social media and went out in the Association's email newsletter to our membership.
Our goal for the task force is to evaluate different options for the future of Magento Open Source and then build a recommendation and supporting business plan by the end of this year. The task force will be made up of a number of Magento Association members from the Magento community as well as a few Adobe employees, with Danny Verkade serving as the Board representative. This task force will be selected and seated by the end of October, and the names of all participants in the task force will be posted to the Magento Association website. My next article will walk through the process by which members of the task force were selected, and future articles will discuss what the task force is doing and what their recommendations are. I’m excited to see how we can all shape the future of Magento Open Source together, and I encourage you to join the Magento Association and help us in these efforts!
