At the Alfresco Community Conference in San Jose Wednesday, Kevin Cochrane and John Newton promised to have a process in place to let non-Alfresco employees become committers to the Alfresco Community code line. The pledge, which many in the community may find surprising because up until this point, Alfresco has operated as a “closed community”, came in response to my question during the “Ask an Expert” session about the possibility of opening up. Kevin responded, “It’s coming with 3.0”, to which John added, “We want to make it easier for developers in the community to contribute to the product. We want to remove the bureaucracy that’s there. The more the merrier.”

Committers will have to assign over copyright and make guarantees that the code they contribute is theirs to give. According to John, this assignment of rights may be difficult for developers working for certain types of organizations, particularly those in government agencies, but Alfresco is working on a solution.