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Mambo Users Are Free And Clear
ValourX writes "By now most of you have heard of the copyright infringement and code theft claims involving the Mambo content management system and businessman Brian Connolly. Legal questions have been raised, guesses have been made, commentary has flowed forth, and everyone involved in the dispute has had their fifteen minutes to relay their sad tale of injustice. Now it is time for the facts, and NewsForge can definitively say, based on material and quotes from Larry Rosen, Dan Ravicher, and Eben Moglen, that Connolly's legal threats against innocent Mambo users are baseless. Part of the new information in this article reveals that the SCO Group helped Brian Connolly by giving him some media contacts. NewsForge is part of OSTG, like Slashdot."
A little bit of Rosen in my life
A little bit of Moglen by my side
A little bit of Ravicher makes me dance
A little bit of Taco dripping down tims pants
I don't know what mambo is. They probably stole this guy's code, though.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
You can do anything with Mambo... anything at all. The only limit is yourself.
Oh wait, no, I'm thinking of this.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
..when he contacted SCO and asked them for legal advice.
in bed.
Good thing they didn't provide a link to www.mamboserver.com, as that would certainly get the server slashdotted.
They provided links all over the place, and many of them to boot, but I find it strange that they link to everyone involved in the story but Mambo. Sure am glad they didn't link to www.mamboserver.com, which just happens to be the official site of Mambo.
innocent smile.
"The mind is a terrible thing to, um, uh, oh bollocks." -- Me
You might notice that there are colored, underlined words in the submission. These are called "links" and lead to other websites if you click your left mouse button on them.
One of these "links" leads to something called "TFA", or, The Fucking Article for short. Reading TFA is optional before posting comments and opinions on it, but you're always encouraged to actually read TFA to help reduce the possibility of stupid questionitis.
Dr. Connolly: Gentlemen, welcome to my underground lair. Here is the plan. Back in the 80s I developed a sophisticated HTML attribute that we called "colspan." Using this "colspan" we were able to format a table so that one cell would span two columns in a given row, thus creating what we referred to as a "lead story block." We'll allow this "lead story block" to find its way into the Mambo open source project and then hold the community ransom for... [quick zoom in] PROPRIETARY CODE RIGHTS! [pinky in mouth]
#2: [clears throat] Dr. Connolly. Don't you think maybe we should ask for more than proprietary code rights? Microsoft alone makes over 30 billion dollars per year in revenue.
Dr. Connolly: Riiight. Then we will hold the Mambo community ransom for... [quick zoom in] UNENDING CIVIL LAWSUITS. [pinky in mouth]
NewsForge Powers: Not s'fast, Dr. Connolly! Colspan is a common table attribute used by many groovy CMS-based websites. You've got no case, man!
Dr. Connolly: Shit. Oh hell, let's just do what we always do, FUD the hell out of eWeek and CNet and threaten the reputation of free software