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These are some graphs I created from the data publically available at CiviCRM's Sourceforge.  Sourceforge provides limited data only on the release dates of a version (i.e. 3.1.5) and then the number of subsequent downloads to date but we can still interpret some useful conclusions from the data.  Dave Greenberg shared one of these graphs at CiviCon.  The data is from Mar 1, 2011 so I wanted to publish them before the data became too stale.

The first graphic is the simplest to understand - CiviCRM all versions 2.x compared to all versions 3.x.  Note that the timeframe measured in this graph is similar.  As such, we can conclude that the number of downloads for 3.x have increased about 27% compared to 2.x.

The team is excited to announce the release of third pair of betas for CiviCRM 3.4 and 4.0!

An remember - if you didn't already, make sure you read "Step up and help out" section of this blog post!

The newest versions are:

Our current support policy is to support and bug fix only the latest stable release of CiviCRM. This is primarily due to the amount of time and effort it takes to support multiple releases at the same time. As our user, integrator and developer base increases we expect this policy to change.

Both Drupal 6 and Joomla 1.5 are fairly active releases with support for those releases expected to last for another 12 months or more (based on when the next version is released). However the next version of CiviCRM, v4.1, will only support Drupal 7.x and Joomla 1.6.x based on our current support policy.

We do understand that a large number of our users will still be on the older versions of Drupal and Joomla. If you are not planning to upgrade to the latest version of Drupal/Joomla, please contribute to the Make It Happen that will allow us to extend support for Drupal 6 / Joomla 1.5 for another release. This will ensure that these releases will be supported at least till Mar, 2012. Based on our current schedule, Drupal 6 / Joomla 1.5 will not be supported from Sep, 2011.

As part of the Google Grants program for non-profits, Google offers their Google Checkout service to qualifying non-profits at no-charge with no processing fees. Depending on the fees you would pay with a competing processor this represents an instant 3% jump in your organization's fundraising efforts just by using Google Checkout.

The only limitation has been recurring donations. To address this Google launched Google Subscriptions and now we need to get support into CiviCRM so we can enjoy a single free processing fee payment gateway.

A new Make it Happen iniative was launched to get this going in 4.1 or even 3.4 if we meet the campaign goal soon! A donation to this iniative will easily pay itself back by the savings in processing fees. This initiative is already 70% there with donations from Powered by Action and the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA):

    http://civicrm.org/mih#google

Stable is getting closer and closer, as proved by a second pair of betas for CiviCRM 3.4 and 4.0!

An remember - if you didn't already, make sure you read "Step up and help out" section of this blog post!

The newest versions are:

Hi all,

Was reading lobo's latest blog and I'm almost sure that with these improvments we can have an event smoother event registration. The workflow would be:

So far so good, same as before

Rumour has it that certain, ahem, consultants have been known to, on occasion, miss setting up the occasional CiviCRM cron, or not notice when the cron stops working on upgrade. Such consultants could wind up with egg on their face over crons. Somewhat less culpable are the CiviCRM newbies who didn't know their event waitlists wouldn't work or their memberships wouldn't roll over without the right cron.

We are super pleased to annouce CiviCRM developer and implementor training in London this May 18th and 19th in partnership with the CiviCRM core team.

We're very pleased to annouce that CiviCon is coming to London this August 22nd.

In the grand tradition of CiviCons, we've timed this one to co-incide with DrupalCon London (though we haven't gone quite as mad as they have with UK branding cliches).