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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."
...between himself and the developer but despite numerous requests he has refused to produce it."
He should just type one up in MS Word and use that.
A fake document can be used as evidence.
Just ask Dan Rather.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
It depends on the accent and intonation. Consider it Darth Vader-style (original trilogy of course)...
"Sir, the rebels have sent memos to the open source users"
"(menacing wheeze) That's....not prudent. Prepare a shuttle craft"
Or how about Pratchett Death-style:
"THAT'S...NOT PRUDENT. THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE'S JUST ME."
Or Dirty Harry-style.
"So the question you've got to ask yourself is, do you feel prudent punk? Well, do yah?"
Myriad of remaining comedy voices left as an exercise for the reader.
Cheers,
Ian
...when he could have written a slanderous mambo?
If you are jumping up and down about how long it took you to figure it out and upmodding and threatening mod points, atleast provide a clicky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_sy stem
And of course I post as AC to avoid karma whoring.
The chief component of FUD is Fear... Fear and Doubt. Doubt and Fear. The TWO components of FUD are Fear and Doubt... And Uncertainty. The THREE components of FUD are Fear Uncertainty and Doubt... and an almost fanatical devotion to litigation.
I could be misunderstanding it, but Connolly seems to be saying his code, which he paid a developer to write and told he could not GPL and rerelease it, was put into the Mambo main branch, while his developer is saying it's similar code in function, not [necessarily] form, and reimplementing it for free after being paid to write a proprietary version isn't the same as submitting the code he wrote for Connolly to the Mambo source tree. I could be mistaken here, but couldn't this easily be resolved by a simple comparison of the Mambo and Futuremore source code? I mean, really.
In addition, the Newsforge article's summary claims that Connolly's code is out in the wild, whether it should be or not. That's not been proven, in any of the data I've read. Shouldn't the dispute first resolve whether the code is actually from the Furthermore source before the issue of licensing even comes up?
I don't know about you, but this does sound a lot like SCO...
10 PRINT "Your open source project has our code!"
20 PRINT "Prove it!"
30 PRINT "We don't have to prove it, it's our code!"
40 GOTO 20
It's only an insult if it's not true.
While the first bit of the newsforge article almost goes out of its way to give Connelly's claims the benefit of doubt, the most interesting bit is the coder's (Sakic) reply at the very very end of the article (I know most of you didn't or can't read that far ;) ).
Brian Connolly will distort this story every way til Tuesday, but there is only one set of facts that matter in this case:
1. Brian Connolly paid a Mambo Open Source developer to modify 9 trivial lines of an existing GPL component.
2. One month later, the developer added a similar technique to the Mambo core.
3. Brian Connolly's actual code NEVER appeared in the core Mambo software in any way shape or form.
4. Therefore, any of Connolly's claims are based solely on protecting his big "trade secret", or the very "idea" of displaying a leading story following by two columns of headlines.
5. Any programmer knows how trivial this is, and that this layout technique has been in use since the advent of HTML tables. It is not a "trade secret" that has any protection under any law.
Please contact Brian Connolly and ask him to produce the offending code. He will not be able to because it simply does not exist.
- A Mambo User and Developer
p.s. Furthermore also claims it never distributed the software. This is not only false (we have screenshots of his old download section) but irrelevent given the facts above.
IANAL, but this seems like a very simple dispute to settle.
Mr. Connolly's dispute is with Mr. Sakic. When you pay someone to do creative work for you, you do not necessarily transfer ownership of the copyright with it. First things first, Mr. Connolly must produce a contract that transfers the copyright to him. If he has no such contract, he has no case what-so-ever because he doesn't own the code.
Secondly, with such a contract, he must show that the code in Mambo actually infringes on his copyright. Without such proof, he has no case what-so-ever because there is no infringement.
Now, again IANAL, but if Mr. Connolly were to be able to prove both of these things, restitution must come from Mr. Sakic, not from some innocent bystander. The *users* of Mambo are *not* in violation of any copyright law. As an example, it is not infringement of copyright for me to listen to a copy of a song -- only to *copy* it.
The Mambo team *might* also be infringing since they distribute Mambo. However, I am willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that no court in the world would hear a case against Mambo without resolution of a case against Mr. Sakic. If Mr. Connolly makes no move to sue Mr. Sakic, I believe they are pretty much safe to ignore him (Note: this is not legal advice as I am in no way qualified to give advice).
Now, if Mr. Connolly instead argues that the code modification is a trade secret, then he also only has a case against Mr. Sakic. Once a trade secret has been released, it is no longer a trade secret. He may indeed have a case against Mr. Sakic in this area (though I highly doubt it), but no one else is at risk.
So in summary, Mr. Connolly should sue Mr. Sakic if he has a legitimate grievance. Until that issue is settled, he would be wise to keep his mouth shut.
In my personal opinion, if you hire a free software programmer to modify a GPL piece of software, it is *your* responsibility to explain *very clearly* that you do not want the changes distributed. Distribution of modified GPL code is the norm. If you do not explain this I think you will have a hard time convincing anyone that the programmer should have known better.
There seem to be a lot of misunderstandings. I bothered to read the article, the responses (they both added comments to the Newsforge article), and some of the messages posted.
Some people seem to think that because Mambo is GPL, the code modifications must be released under the GPL. This is only true if Connolly distributes his application. If he keeps the code "within his walls" then he can keep his code changes private. When Emir put the code out there, that violated the GPL which allows Connolly to keep the code to himself in this special case. OK? So Connolly isn't a 100% whack-job.
But the next misunderstanding is on Connolly's part: his code is NOT in the Mambo codebase! Emir re-implemented the code, and gave it extra functionality. So the whole first misunderstanding is mostly irrelevant, because there is no copied code! And this is (I think) why Mambo keeps asking for more info and not getting it: if Connolly had to give line-by-line details of the violation, we would see that there is no line-by-line theft.
However, there is the third misunderstanding (or assumption). And that is that many people appear to assume that Emir clean-roomed this. He didn't. From everything I've read, Emir got sneaky: he liked the feature, he wanted it in Mambo, so he took the code he already wrote for Connolly, and tweaked the shit out of it so it looked different and better. And it really is different and better, but it's built right off what he had already done for Connolly. I don't know what to think about this part -- there is no law I know of that would address this clearly. It probably exists, but I don't know of it. And so I'm left thinking that Connolly is completely out of luck and has absolutely no case at ALL, but Emir behaved terribly, and I wouldn't want such a person working on my codebase.
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