Sadly, the official Joomla Extensions Directory (JED) is no longer accepting any extensions that are not released under the same license as Joomla itself (GPL). Even open source extensions released under compatible licenses (eg. LGPL) are no longer allowed. Any existing extensions released under other licenses will be removed from the JED in June 2009. Also, all Joomla 1.0 extensions, whether GPL or not, will be removed from the official directory.

In my opinion, this is a huge mistake, and a terrible shame. The JED has been an incredibly useful and well-managed resource, providing Joomla users with a one-stop-shop for extensions of every type. Now this resource is losing some of its value. I could understand if it were just commercial or just encrypted extensions that were being excluded (although I would still disagree with that), but I cannot understand why extensions released under GPL-compatible licenses such as LGPL and Expat are being ousted, nor why no provision is being made for the hundreds of thousands of Joomla 1.0 sites that still need access to some of the older extensions. Whilst I'm sure the JED will continue to be a valuable and well-used resource, if you want a non-biased, all-inclusive directory, you will soon have to look elsewhere.

Several individuals and companies have set up their own extension directories in response to this. One of the more interesting new directories is the one at www.cmsextensions.org/extensions/. This site, built by a group of Joomla extension developers rather than an individual or single company, aims to provide an unbiased collection of extensions not only for Joomla, but also for other content management systems, such as Elxis, Mambo, and Drupal. It also provides a discussion forum, news, job postings, and social networking features. If you have written an extension for Joomla (or any of the other CMSs supported), whether GPL or not, please add your listing, and help make this a new 'one-stop-shop' for CMS extensions.