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Mambo Users Threatened
An anonymous reader writes "Newsforge has an article about a recent dispute over code in Mambo (a Free CMS). A Mr. Connolly has sent threatening emails to Mambo users over this, a move John Weathersby of OSSI was quoted as saying 'That's ... not prudent.' The dispute is over some trivial code that checks whether a story is a lead story and if so displays it across multiple columns, as it's a modification of GPL code the Mambo team maintain it must remain GPL but Mr. Connolly claims otherwise."
If he never re-distributed the code, how did the code end up in Mambo?
The modification was then "leaked" to Mambo.
Not entirely accurate. According to the guy who wrote the code, he just wrote a different implementation of the idea, and gave that to Mambo.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Post-Nuke
Drupal
Xoops
e107
Xaraya
Mambo in the middle at close second place, MUCH better than Post-Nuke and Xaraya. Their main website hasn't been doing too bad handling the traffic as of this post, so I guess we'll see how it is by the end of the day.
It's still the lead story over here and the site is up and not too slow, it died briefly under the initial rush but overall I'd say it's performed much better than most. I should add, I'm the author of that little benchmark you mentioned :)
If you are presently using the software application "Mambo OS" in any release post October 3, 2003, you and your organization are potentially exposed to CIVIL LITIGATION and possibly CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.
:-)
If people/companies can be sued for just using software then our legal system would be in worse shape than it is today.
I've had this argument time and time again with people online. Just by USING something doesn't make you guilty of breaking the law. If I contributed however, well, that's another story altogether.
For example, if I put something into the New York Times that I didn't have business submitting then sure I'm liable. If I merely purchased a copy of the paper and read it then I'm not liable.
Our courts might be messed up but they are not stupid
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Unreasonable?? Isn't it every creator's own choice what license he wants his work to be distributed under?
To me it is entirely reasonable.
After all he gives it away without asking for any monetary reward, so asking (GPL=expecting/demanding) the reciprocal should not upset anyone that uses this work.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
No, it's not. Not even by your own definition. What you described -- person works for company A, gets better, then goes on to do a better job at company B -- is NOT what happened. That was the entire fucking point I was trying to make. To shoehorn what happened with Emir into your example, it's like this: person works for company A, keeps the code he/she wrote for company A, then delivers that code (with lots of changes to cover up the copying) to company B.
When I go from company to company, I take my knowledge with me, and I implement roughly the same thing each time -- a better intranet, usually. But I rewrite my code from scratch. I do not have the other company's code in front of me, I do not copy it, I do not necessarily even use the same patterns/layout for objects, functions, methods, modules, included files, etc. I get a clean start. That is perfectly fine, and in line with what you describe as "normal." But that is also NOT what Emir did. Or perhaps more accurately, it is not what he appears to have done, based upon what I've seen. Some of his messages to Connolly have sounded rather weasely. He gives the impression of a man who pleads innocence, but only on a technicality or letter of the law, all the while knowing full well that he wasn't following the spirit of the law. This is why Emir WILL win any lawsuit that comes against him for this -- and it makes him slightly clever. But it also is why I wouldn't want to work with him.
At this point, I should make a general disclaimer: I've only read what both sides (well, all three sides, including the Mambo team) have published. It's entirely possible someone lied or misquoted. In which case, Emir might emerge as entirely honorable, or Connolly might emerge as entirely sane. I just happen to doubt either side will come out looking good to me.
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