This story is about volunteering for Joomla and one of our volunteer's favourite bands. If someone had come to me 12 years ago and asked me to be part of a software project distributed for free, with no salary for employees, I would have laughed and walked away. Now, 12 years into the Joomla project I find myself volunteering more and getting more excited about the future of Joomla.
Joomla! is very underrated - period. As one of the top Open Source CMS's, Joomla gets compared to WordPress and Drupal regularly. The one thing none of these comparisons seem to mention is Joomla! is the only CMS maintained and managed 100% by volunteers. From programmers to the marketing team to the president, Joomla is all volunteer.
The volunteer aspect of Joomla might not seem like a fantastic concept until you run the numbers. Let's use Microsoft as an example.
MICROSOFT OS:
| Windows 8 | 26 October 2012 |
| Windows 7 | 22 October 2009 |
| Windows Vista | 30 January 2007 |
| Windows XP Professional x64 |
25 April 2005 |
From 2005 to 2012 Microsoft released four major updates to its OS. In the same timeframe, Joomla has released more versions of its CMS than a billion dollar company!
JOOMLA:
| 1.0 | September 22, 2005 |
| 1.5 | January 22, 2008 |
| 1.6 | January 10, 2011 |
| 1.7 | July 19, 2011 |
| 2.5 | January 24, 2012 |
| 3.0 | September 27, 2012 |
Volunteering has its upsides and downsides - the lack of free