Users, Organizations and Contributions in 1.6

There's been a lively discussion on the mailing list about requirements for linking CMS (Drupal / Joomla) Users to CiviCRM contacts and handling contributions from both types of contacts. We recognize that there is still work needed to handle the variety of use cases out there - but we've made decent progress in the upcoming 1.6 release:

• CMS (Drupal / Joomla) users can be "linked" to either an Individual contact (default behavior) OR and Organization contact.
• Sites will be able to provide a separate user registration link which will expose Organization profile(s) and create a user record, a new contact Organization record - and "link" them.
• Offline Contributions can be manually input OR imported for any contact type (Individual, Organization or Household)
• Online Contributions by authenticated users will be linked to the associated contact record. If the authenticated user IS an organization - the contribution will show up under the organization's contribution data and activity history.

Going forward, we will be looking at relationship-based permissioning and other solutions which will support uses cases like "this individual has a special relationship with that organization and should have permission to view and/or edit organization data...". Feedback and design / code contributions are welcome as always...