HOUSTON and NEW YORK, July 13 /PRNewswire/ -- The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), provider of pro-bono legal services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), today announced it will represent the Plone Foundation. The Foundation, based in Houston, Texas, supports the development and promotion of the open source content management system, Plone, and its developer community.

"Plone is a sophisticated open source Content Management System that requires the best IP legal representation available," said Joel Burton, president, Plone Foundation. "By working with the Software Freedom Law Center, we are guaranteed that the world's best legal minds on Free and Open Source Software will be representing the best interests of the Plone Foundation and community."

Plone is a content management framework that sits on top of Zope, a widely-used open source web application server and development system. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is supported by thousands of developers and companies around the world. Plone works with most popular relational database systems, LDAPs, filesystems and other data store software and runs on a wide range of operating systems, including Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris and BSD.

"Legal representation must be an essential component of any open source project in order to effectively protect developers and users of software that provides considerable value to the market," said Eben Moglen, chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center. "The Software Freedom Law Center will provide Plone with the necessary legal counsel it requires to ensure peace of mind for developers, vendors and users."

About Plone and the Plone Foundation

Plone is the leading Content Management System for the award-winning Zope application server. Supported by thousands of developers from around the world, it is one of the most sophisticated, popular, and easy to use Content Management Systems on the market today. Plone provides a highly customizable, server-side architecture, and boasts a simple yet flexible API. Plone is highly scalable, stable, extensible, and has open standards as its core mentality. It runs on many operating systems, including Linux, Windows, Solaris, Mac OS X, and many varieties of Unix. It has wide international support, and is shipped with the interface available in over 30 languages. Users of Plone include Marriott, NASA, Lufthansa, Continental Airlines, the Governors of Texas and Hawaii, and many others. Information about Plone is available at http://www.plone.org/.

About The Software Freedom Law Center

The Software Freedom Law Center -- chaired by Eben Moglen, one of the world's leading experts on copyright law as applied to software -- provides legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software. The Law Center is dedicated to assisting non-profit open source developers and projects. For criteria on eligibility and to apply for assistance, please contact the Law Center directly or visit the Web at http://www.softwarefreedom.org/.

Media contacts: Jennifer Cloer Page One PR/Software Freedom Law Center 503-547-9451 jennifer@pageonepr.com

CONTACT: Jennifer Cloer of Page One PR, +1-503-547-9451, or
jennifer@pageonepr.com, for Software Freedom Law Center

Web site: http://www.plone.org/

Web site: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/