Slashdot Mirror
Mambo Foundation Gets Copyright, After All
daria42 writes "Responding to the concerns of developers and backflipping on a previous policy in the process, Miro, the commercial company which owns the copyright to the GPL'd Mambo content management system has decided to assign all intellectual property rights to the Mambo Foundation, which it created to manage the CMS. The company has been at the centre of a storm of controversy previously reported here on Slashdot, which has seen the core developers of the CMS fork the project."
First post while slashdot has problems.
Why the controversy? If you don't like the way somebody wants to play, fork it and do it your own way. And common courtesy says you should rename your fork to distinguish it from the original.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
half a dozen front page stories w/o any comments?
frist pist
But why bother reading #1 in the FAQ? 1. Is this a fork of the Mambo project? No, it is a rebranding effort that will continue to run largely on the existing codebase. Work is continuing on the project by the same team that has developed Mambo as you know it today. Therefore we see it as continuing development rather than a 'fork'.
First
Never mess with Open Source!!!!!
This is NOT a sig - billy
Four stories with no comments?! What's wrong?
wtf?
test
Altho I'm glad with the decision and appraise Miro for doing this, I wonder: would they have done this if the developers hadn't decided to split from the project?
The wonderful thing about life is that it goes on. Miro made a mistake and corrected it. Everyone who has never made a mistake please take a step forward.
Is it just me, or do the last 5 entries have 0 comments despite being posted some time ago? Seems a little odd. . .
I suppose, though, that if it is just me, this post will look really, really dumb.
BAM
Hello,
Consulting for several large governments, I'd always done my work on
Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do
some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was
very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our
exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.
Although we met several technical challenges along the way
(specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we
were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process
went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were
considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.
So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that
we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It
was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something
called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license
states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available.
Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money
we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would
now be available at no cost to our competitors.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any
products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to
its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever
use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult
position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with
another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no
option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000.
I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive
with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually
guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my
experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my
associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to
something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source".
Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure
it remains only a bit player.
Thank you for your time.
Trolling the trolls who troll the trolls since '92
I know this is probably get modded as off topic, but 5 stories without a single comment? let alone a first post or other spam?
*Feels Earth start to rotate backwards*
What about all the non-miro developers that worked under the GPL, can they take their GPL work and call it their own once again?
...or are comments not showing up at all?
Will this even post? I'm so confused.
Slashdot? Foobared?
Where's all the comments?
first post
Since there is no Core Team members among Mambo Foundation Board of Directors it looks like Miro transfered copyright to themselves.
With the only difference that now it is called Mambo Foundation, not Miro.
This is just another great example when Ethics is more important than money.
does this work?
This gesture by Miro is an empty one. It seems to me that Miro has shot themselves in the foot over this Mambo Foundation and made themselves look awfully foolish. Right now they are attempting damage control by trying to appear like "good guys" with all these disingenuous gestures.
All the coding talent that was behind Mambo has since left to form their own foundation. To find out what the ex-developers of Mambo are up to, visit OpenSourceMatters
Disclosure: Yes, I'm the one who wrote the Mambo developer exodus report on Ars Technica.
Just curious... How will this impact Mambo, and other CMS's to come?
-Imidazole
Hilarious Office Prank!
Does it mean there is no spoon ?
kids, it's the true power the developers have in the open source projects... now for the next lesson: sales.
If the Foundation had of been set up the way the MSC and the Core Devs wanted, this would have been good, but the damage has been done by Miro. They can't take it back and they are only trying to make ammends. They aren't transferring the copyright far, considering that they control the Mambo Foundation, so who is the real winner? Not open source. OpenSourceMatters is where the new work is going and that is where I am going to stake my claim and pitch my tent.
I always wondered where this setting was...
...backflipping on a previous policy...
After a backflip you still face the same direction.
I think PHP is great, but I don't think it's quite ready for a robust content management system. The PHP CMS community is very fragmented. When shopping around for a good open source CMS, I found a profileration of nukes. The two CMSes I considered seriously were Mambo and Drupal. Both of them have had some recent issues that made me glad I didn't pick them. Not only that there were some serious PHP security issues. I've been a fan of Perl far longer, but was amazed at how quickly I could slap together usable stuff in PHP. And I didn't choose a Perl based CMS either.
Ultimately, I chose Plone which sits on top of Zope which sits on top of Python. It can sit behind Apache, You can use it with other other databases than it's own weird object db, but it's not easy. It also has a steep learning curve. Despite all these drawbacks and concerns, Plone is the most robust, secure, and ready to use out of the box CMS I've found.
Maybe it was just dumb luck and the recent problems with Mambo, Drupal, and PHP made me feel better about my decision. I'm still learning Zope and Plone, but I'm impressed that I can throw stuff together pretty quickly with it, even though hides stuff in non-intuitive locations.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Why I am amazed at the things that get slashdotted these days, last time it was the Mr. Shreves 20 questions interview and now this old news.
What surprises this ol' cowboy is that some news apparently isn't as worthy of such attention from ya'll. Like Mr. Robert Castley resigning from the Foundatiob board and leaving only Miro members and a somewhat suspect Jim Begley. A man, I've heard, has been in the business of mergers and aquisitions in the past...
For those of ya'll who aren't followin' these events, this Foundation is little more than a attempt at legitimacy by Miro, given it's chairman is the CEO of Miro.
If you wanna be a 3PD member, it's $1000. If you're a bigger business, it's $50k. The first rule of membership, and I'm not kiddin ya'll here, is to show full public support at all times for the Foundation. Break the rules, and any member can be fined $500. Seems like someone has been drinkin' too much of their own snake oil here.
Little more than the smoke 'n' mirrors we used to have at the county fair when I was a boy. Hell, we had to pay admission to that as well, come to think of it.
If ya'll are interested in full coverage of this debacle with Miro, feel free to mosie on by to my blog coverage of the events. First to report on this terrible calamity that has descended on the project formerly known as Mambo, still not afraid to tell it like it is.
Thankye for your time,
The Lone Mamber
More news quite likely to come from the people who really care about our community, .
Holy capitalist pigsty, Batman! A commercial company? How evil can it get?
It can't Robin. We...must...pray...that Gotham will...survive this...unthinkable scourge...
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
Hmm, isn't the foundation itself a little suspicious ? How does it help developpers to know it now has the copyright to the mambo source code ? And does it really matter anyway ? GPL depends on Copyright, true. But who cares, once the source has been released and permission given to hack on it ?
OpenSourceMatters is proves that despite power-hungry companies such as Miro can't always win, as in this case it shows that not everyone goes with the flow.
Our branch isn't the fork! the other branch is the fork!
While I tend to agree with the sentiment, yah can't claim it's not a fork if the end result is two development trees.
The Steampunk Workshop
My understanding is that the Miro CEO appointed all or most of the board members of the foundation, without much community involvement.
This contrasts with most open source foundations where the folks developing the code or trusted parties end up as the board.
What does it matter what they say? They're trying to spin this in the most favorable way to themselves and redefining a commonly acceptable term (fork) to mean something which it doesn't. Objectively, the codebase will branch out into two (or more) separate efforts. Pop quiz: what does one call such a branch?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Nobody will argue that a fork isn't the end result of this. The problem is that the branch that will continue along the same path that is has been all along is also the branch that will be required to change its name.
Did the foundation get the intellectual property rights or the copyright? There's quite a difference, after all!
Whether this "Mambo Foundation" will simply "fork" each of the successive releases by these folks and sell it as their own, thereby reducing their R&D budget to nearly zero.
the resources that year contract.q new core is going irc network. The good manners and shower. For with any sort on an endeavour
Given that the majority, by far, of previous developers will be working on the non-Miro version, I would call that the trunk. Whatever Miro's new developers do with the code is the fork, despite the fact that they get to keep the name.
But there is no spoon....
It was doomed to fail from the fifth character typed on the first source file.
This depends on what you mean by "is". /I did not have sex with that woman. //I did not fork this source!
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Miro didn't just fail to transfer copyright. They also:
- Dumped long-time forum admins and contributing users without explanation when they expressed agreement with the developers or pointed at the developers' new site.
- Deleted messages that, without hostility, pointed to the developers' letter or new site.
- Failed to place any developers on the foundation board.
- Setup a payment scheme for membership to the foundation that is prohibitively expensive for small developers and pipes money to Miro.
- Failed to publically respond to the developers' letter for days even while banning forum users and deleting event comments.
- When finally responding, filling the response with marketing speak and false claims of rule violations to justify censorship actions in the forums.
And that list is just off the top of my head.
No, Miro has many bridges to build if I am to ever work with them again. Turning over copyright is one small bucket of dirt to fill the large hole they dug themselves in over the last few days.
...they want their worn-out trolling technique back..
--
Trolling all trolls from 1992_Called to Zonk
and I still don't know what the hell it's talking about. What is Mambo? What is Miro?