September 2008

Joomla! Mission, Values and Vision

Foundations for the project

Written by Chris Davenport

One of the real pleasures of being on the Joomla! Core Team is you get to help shape the future of this wonderful project. Much of what the Core Team does is of a strategic nature; we are collectively responsible for making decisions about where we go and what we do as a project. But ultimately our strategy for taking the project forwards depends on what we see as our mission and our vision of the future. In the early years of the project this vision was not well defined and as a result there were times when we lacked a clear idea of what should be done next. But over the last several months we and the board of Open Source Matters have been working on a very important document that will help us shape strategies to continue to build the project as a major open source content management system and nurture the community that is the very lifeblood of the project.

It is with great pleasure that we present to you our Mission, Vision and Values:

Mission

The Mission describes the overall purpose of the project. This is what the project was formed to do:

"Our mission is to provide a flexible platform for digital publishing and collaboration."

Vision

The Vision statements are what keep us moving forward. They paint a picture of the future and show us what that future will look like if we are successful:

In our vision, we see:

People publishing and collaborating in their communities and around the world;

• Software that is free, secure and of high-quality;
• A community that is rewarding and enjoyable to participate in;
• People around the world using their preferred languages;
• A project that acts autonomously;
• A project that is socially responsible;
• A project dedicated to maintaining the trust of its users.

Key Values

The Key Values help guide our behaviour and our decisions on a daily basis. They are numbered to reflect their relative priorities and so help us make decisions when there are competing priorities:

1. Freedom
2. Equality
3. Trust
4. Community
5. Collaboration
6. Usability

The new home for this document is at Open Source Matters, and an annotated version is also available on that Web site.

This document has been through an extensive community consultation process and I would like to personally thank the following people for their help in hammering out the fine details of the text and commentary (alphabetically): Ian MacLennan, Jennifer Marriot, Sam Moffatt, Robin Muilwijk, Ron Severdia, Rob Schley, Amy Stephen, Elin Waring, Tonie de Wilde and Russ Winter.

Add Comment