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Liferay's Responsibility to Community 

Open source is a productive model for the development of software. We believe it is the best choice for the development of Liferay and, therefore, we are committed to providing programs that benefit our community.

One benefit from open source development is that it allows a larger, more creative team to participate in the development of the core project as well as  the extensions to the project, creating an enormous interdependent ecosystem.  While proprietary software can also develop a large ecosystem (e.g., Windows, iOS), open source projects:

1. must adapt to the demands of their users or be replaced by other open source projects,
2. benefit from features identified by an extensive group of freeware users as well as from enterprise users, 
3. allow individuals to build extensions to or solutions from the freeware (i.e., leverage free core), and 
4. encourage individuals to create business plans based on selling extensions to freeware or enterprise users (i.e., leverage existing customer base).

The success of an open source project is dependent on the growth of its ecosystem, while an open source project's ecosystem is dependent on the empowerment of its community.  Therefore, Liferay has implemented several programs to facilitate our growing community. 

Open Source Community Membership Rights and Responsibilities:

Leveraging open source software has many benefits and responsibilities. Anyone who develops with, on, or for Liferay software, deploys Liferay software, or even contributes to the knowledge-base for Liferay software, is part of the Liferay community. The most obvious benefit to using Liferay Community Edition is the ability to use the software for free. Without discussing the definitions of free beer*, it can be stated that open source software can be downloaded, installed, and used in some manner without a financial payment.  This has allowed Liferay to spread throughout the world. With as many as 1 million websites running Liferay CE (we use 4M total downloads for public discussion)**, Liferay has an enormous community presence worldwide. Community members are responsible to ensure the continued growth and quality of the resources available to other community members***. While many responsibilities are not mandatory, Liferay’s goal is to develop services that can allow individuals to benefit from the community and to grow the ecosystem while adhering to their responsibility to benefit everyone.

Liferay, Liferay Marketplace, and Liferay Projects

There are several programs that allow individuals to contribute to the Liferay ecosystem:

1. James Falkner's Community Participation List:
   1. http://www.liferay.com/community/welcome/participate
2. Special Activities:
   1. http://www.liferay.com/community/special-activities/100-papercuts
3. Liferay Projects
   1. http://www.liferay.com/community/liferay-projects
   2. Liferay has recently previewed two new programs, the Liferay Marketplace and Liferay Projects, which allow additional ways for individuals to contribute to the community. 
4. Liferay Marketplace
   1. http://youtu.be/eC9m1oZSM1o
   2. Many developers want to focus on developing features for the core within an open source project and believe it is the main area in which they can contribute.

These four allow a nice gradient for participation in the community. Some contributions can be done through http://issues.liferay.com, while others can be done as decoupled projects at http://www.liferay.com/community/liferay-projects in combination with Liferay employees or mentored through our community program. Others can be developed completely decoupled as applications, hooks, and so forth available through the Liferay Marketplace. These options are designed to allow the ecosystem to expand worldwide. 

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* http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

** http://bit.ly/nBWLPd

*** As defined by the Liferay trademark policy: http://www.liferay.com/trademark