We recently packaged a new maintenance release for the current 1.9 version of Moodle, as well as new maintenance releases for older 1.8, 1.7 and 1.6 versions.

Each of the new releases contains long lists of minor bug fixes (see the release notes for details). As usual, many thanks to all the developers and users who helped with finding and fixing these.

Several security vulnerabilities were also fixed in all versions, making it important that you upgrade existing Moodle sites.

Even if you can't make major upgrades in the near future, you should at least upgrade to the latest stable package for your version. (For example if you have 1.8 already, then it's very safe and easy to upgrade it to the new 1.8.7 because there are no new features, just bug fixes)

All releases are available, as usual, from the Moodle download site.

As the statistics show, our community continues to grow rapidly. We have over 1,500 new users registering each day. Congratulations to our 500,000th registered user, who wins a T-shirt from the Moodle Shop.

Congratulations to Martin Dougiamas, Moodle's founder and lead developer, for winning the award of Best Education Enabler at the 2008 Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards ceremony at OSCON yesterday.

The Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards are presented to individuals for dedication, innovation, leadership and outstanding contribution to open source.

Martin is now listed, together with the other 2008 award winners, in the Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards - Hall of Fame.