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.

Comments

So. . .Miro gutted?

[Limburgher]

My impression is basically that the core devs were unhappy with Miro and left, intending to fork. Is Miro's main beef that the Miro fork wil die while the Rebel fork will survive, making Miro the victim of essentially a brain drain? If Miro's stated objective is the continued survival of Mambo, what's the big deal? Mambo survives, and maybe Miro becomes irrelevant. Ideally, this shouldn't bother the folks at Miro, since the core devs are still in essence working on Mambo.

Just my $0.02.

Re:Correct link

[Earered]

Well, just to add fuel on the fire:

Wasn't Manbo Open Source a GPL version of an old version of Miro's Manbo proprietary CMS?

And when the Open version got so much plug-in Miro attempted to get the Mambo Open Source CMS API to match their last Mambo proprietary CMS API? Without results? (IIRC, one or two years ago, when I used Mambo open source for a website).

As an user of this CMS, it feels like Miro mades some strange moves (they probably did not expect the sources of their old CMS to become something that could overshadow their own new CMS).

Wow, their answers sure don't help.

[Anthony Boyd]

So I read the 20 questions and answers. I'm also slightly involved with Mambo -- not as a developer, but as a contractor who gets paid to deploy Mambo for companies. So I've seen the community at work, and I think I have a handle on it (though admittedly from an outsider's perspective).

All I can say is, wow. If Miro thought the publication of those answers would paint them as reasonable, they've really lost it. They start out sounding cool & collected, but quickly veer into crazy-town. For example, question #8 asks why no developers are on the Board. Their answer is OK at the start, basically "hey, Andrew and Brian from the dev team were going to be on board." If that's all you read, they sound fine. But they go on to admit that they later decided -- for the developers, without input -- that the Board was too much for them. Solution? They decided to have no devs on the board.

And just like that, their answer has gone from cool & collected to an admission of stupidity. They're not stupid to think that being on the Board is tough, mind you. It probably is, and it probably does mean that any developer on the Board would have little time left to BE a developer. But they are stupid to think that they would determine what is "too much" on their own, without allowing the developers to decide their own fate, and doubly stupid to think that the only solution is to choose one or the other. There must be dozens of possible ways to compromise or collaborate.

What else? Let's see. Although they don't explicitly list the names of people who it will apply to, they do state that core team developers must also be members. And guess what? Members can be penalized financially if they break Miro's rules. Isn't that a whopper of a chilling effect on development? I sure as hell won't volunteer my time on a project that will bill me if I'm deemed to be "too rude" on the forum, or whatever their rules are.

It's bizarre to me to think that anyone could expect something like this would go over well with the volunteers. It's no surprise to see nearly every major code contributor walking away from Miro. Anyone who stays has to be wealthy, out of it, or completely passive and compliant.

Miro, from one "project leader" to another, all I can say is that I'm happy -- thrilled -- when someone contributes code to my projects. I can't imagine erecting all these hurdles. I can't imagine treating volunteers like 5-year-olds, who need "consequences" for their naughty behavior. If bad behavior is a problem, the correct course of action is to cut ties with that developer. Grow up.

Re:Explain your misunderstanding of its use.

[HiThere]

Socialist is one of those words that everyone has some definition for, and the ways of reconciling the definitions are obscure.

Perhaps his definition of "socialist" has something to do with statist based humanitarianism? Many people seem to have something like that in mind (some pro, and some con).

I acknowledge that I don't really understand what socialist is doing in that sentence, but that's because I never know what someone is talking about when they talk about socialism. Remember that socialist has been used to describe everything from the Nazi party through the US dept. of Indian Affairs...and on through the government of Sweden. Finding a common meaning in that morass is beyond my limited capabilities...but it does seem to have something to do with governments.