Plone is an open source content management system built on top of the Zope application server. Plone is free software and is designed to be extensible. It is suited for an internal website or may be used as a server on the Internet, playing such roles as a document publishing system and groupware collaboration tool.
Plone is released under the GNU General Public License. Major development is conducted periodically during special meetings called
Plone Sprints. Additional functionality is added to Plone with
Products, which may be distributed through the Plone website or otherwise. The Plone Foundation owns and protects all intellectual property and trademarks. Plone also has legal backing from the council of the Software Freedom Law Center.
The Plone project was started in 1999 by Alan Runyan, Alexander Limi, and Vidar Andersen. It has quickly grown into one of the most popular and powerful open-source content management systems in the world.