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Miro Replies to Mambo Allegations
Rico! writes "Miro aka The Mambo Foundation has finally provided answers to some thorny questions and also fired back at the Rebel Developer Alliance." Here is the Slashdot story covering the original split where the developers all jumped ship.
Now, the real question is: is this good for the community?
As long as it is under a reasonable open source license, it doesn't matter: the non-corporate version will continue to be developed and enhanced as long as users want it.
Remember: open source is the free market answer to corporate inefficiencies; it is succeeding because it is more efficient than proprietary software development.
I really have to ask for some clarification on what exactly you think you're talking about? You've referred to three situations that share almost no commonality and then throw some random thought at the end about IP. And where does socialist angle possibly fit into this at all? The thing that bothers me more than your post is the fact that someone modded you up. So in the spirit of being properly informed, allow me to sum up these issues for you.
Mozilla Corporation - Mozilla has a historically commercial background and their more corporate approach to open source should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with their history. The formation of Mozilla Corp should in no way change the direction of the project, and it's not that uncommon of an approach for a non-profit to take.
Linux Trademark - Linux is trademarked to prevent the FUD campaigns under the Linux name, which is unfortunately a growing problem. The costs for licensing are small (from $200 to a max of $5000 for multi-million dollar corps) and only exist to support the maintenance and defense of the trademark.
Mambo - Seems like a straight split because of developer differences. It's a GPL'd project so they can fork and have at it.
In all of these cases the status of the code has not been changed from open source. In fact, the terms of the licenses for all the projects prohibit them from ever trying to "retract" the released source.
In the future please perform a little research and analysis to avoid spreading this type of misinformation.
and Linus' trademark licensing of Linux, we are seeing a very real trend developing.
Linus's trademark licensing of Linux is merely a protection to counter offensive marketing by other 'non-OSS friendly' corporations. Its' like some music artists that copyright their songs, but make them available free for anyone to perform or use, just with permission. The main purpose of the copyright is not to make money, but to ensure that the lyrics are used in the context the writer chose. This is no different, the trademark is not to 'cash in' on its popularity at all, but to control the way the brand name is used.
Your methodology of posting is very interesting, taking unconnected events of minor consequence, trying to push some relevancy through to a reference to IP, which is yet another issue entirely. From the article itself, the Mambo Foundation has been granted an irrevocable, perpetual, royalty free licence, thus negating any issues with IP.
"Joy is not in things; it is in us." Richard Wagner
As an entrepeneur who uses Mambo commercially, I find it odd, to say the least, that Miro have been acting dumb on their websites. Of course, one should not needlessly frighten one's customers, but if your top developers run away, at least some assurance that business will continue as usual would have been nice.
Now they are pretending that nothing has happened. Does the emperor really expect us not to notice his lack of clothes?
It would have been better if Miro had responded directly, rather than via 3rd parties.
The best thing Miro could do now is an all-out backpedal with appologies to the core developers of Mambo, a redo of their fondation rules and a free beer for all core participants at the next Mambo convention.
Right now _everybody_ is looking at this and it is ultra-evident that Miro did a big screw up. The interview emphasises this once again.
The way this whole foundation was built is just plain silly. The conditions for joinging are simular to SCO licences and that tells a lot.
Unless the core team really screws up with their successor, this can only turn out bad for Miro. If they don't admit a mistake and see the utter insult their foundation rules are to core developers they will disappear into insignificance in less than a year.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca