This is just another step that shows why WordPress stopped being “just a blogging platform” long ago. For those of who think that WordPress can’t be anything more than just a blogging platform, stop by the CMS section of the official WordPress Showcase for some great examples of WordPress used as a CMS all around the world.

The Open Source Awards is an annual online event held by Packt Publishing to distinguish excellence among Open Source projects. The Award, formerly known as the Open Source Content Management System (CMS) Award, is designed to encourage, support, recognize and reward a wide range of Open Source projects.

Matt Mullenweg is obviously excited, as”the most central piece of WordPress’s identity, its name, is now fully independent from any company.” Ownership of the trademark could have made Automattic millions on the name alone, but in a move praised as “extremely generous and community-minded,” they are ensuring that both WordPress and its name will never be used to unfairly profit from, confuse, or cause harm to the blogging platform, its integrity, and the community itself.

Download 3.0.1 from WordPress.org or update automatically from the Dashboard (Tools -> Upgrade) in your site’s admin area. If you encounter any trouble with the automated updater, try deactivating your plugins before reinitiating the update.

The first WordCamp was in 2006, when WordPress was on version 2.0 (Duke). The number of WordPress users to power their web publishing has grown by millions. If you’re in the SF Bay Area and want to attend WordCamp San Francisco, enter here.

“We’re now starting to re-follow real people from the WordPress community. There will be no more auto-follow. If you are a WordPress developer, designer, blogger, fan site, whatever and would like to appear in the @WordPress updates stream, then send an @ reply to us and we can add you to the new list (assuming you’re not hawking diet pills, free iPads or ways to get a million followers). This way, people who are new to WordPress and go to check us out on Twitter will get a sense of the vibrant community that we have. People who send @ messages to us won’t (hopefully) wonder indefinitely why they were ignored, because without all the spam, maybe we can use Twitter as it was intended to be used, as another channel of communication.”

So, take this in mind if you were following WordPress on Twitter.

If you’re a WordPress fan attending SxSW (or you just happen to be in this area), please join us for lunch after 12pm tomorrow, Sunday March 14. We’re getting the BBQ from Rudy’s and the red velvet cake from Central Market. Yum! Come, eat, talk about the cool things you’re doing with WordPress, let us know what we can do better. Lead developers Mark Jaquith and Ryan Boren will be there, core contributors will be there, plugin and theme developers will be there. You should be, too!

Location: Conjunctured coworking space, 1309 East 7th St., Austin, TX 78702. From the convention center, walk up to 7th Street, hang a right, and walk until you get to #1309. If you’re tired of walking, taking a cab is a decent option. Note that this is on the other side of I-35 from the convention center.

Matt Mullenweg, the director of the WordPress Foundation, has been directly involved in the creation of a number of WordPress projects that espouse the core philosophy, including: WordPress, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, bbPress and BuddyPress. Go check the foundation site out. Enjoy!