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."

Comments

Except the devs specifically say this isn't a fork

[misha69]

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'.

The system works, life goes on.

[Njall]

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.

There is no Core members in the MF

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Empty gesture

[Deffexor]

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.

Re:Empty gesture

[Deusy]

So... Miro created Mambo and released it under the GPL. They then created the Mambo Foundation to look after the interests of Mambo. What's the problem? Why did the Foundation need to own the copyrights? It's not like Miro could revoke the GPL nor, without the explicit permission of the volunteer developers, publish a closed source version incorporating any non-Miro contributions.

The words 'mountain' and 'molehill' spring to mind?

forking....

[rd4tech]

kids, it's the true power the developers have in the open source projects... now for the next lesson: sales.

This is too little too late

[pasamio]

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.

Re:This is too little too late

[Anthony Boyd]

Sheesh man, cheer for victories, no matter how incomplete. Open source advocates should take what the can get and always push for more, not bitch about how spoiled their victory is.

No, I think the grandparent post was right. There is no victory to cheer for here. The entire development team left. There are zero developers (see the small box on the right side) for the project. It's dead. And you'd have to be crazy to try to revive it, because the terms put in place for development include agreeing to be fined or otherwise penalized if you violate some unknown set of rules.

So this is all just beating a dead horse. They could next say "we've upgraded the server" and "we've found 2 new members for the Board" and any number of other praiseworthy announcements, but it wouldn't matter, because it's dead.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's irrelevant. It's hand-waving. It isn't a real victory, because it's of no use or relevance anymore. Now if they donated the copyright to the new opensourcematters.org, that would be something significant, because that's where the future product releases will be.

Re:This is too little too late

[fucksl4shd0t]

I'll tell you what. I see a lot of childish bickering going back and forth. I see developers saying one thing and doing another. I see a company saying one thing and doing another.

I'm going to find me a new CMS. I don't need this shit on my website, there's plenty of other projects out there for me to use.

It's not like Mambo is all that great. Having done a fair amount of third-party component development, and having suffered a fair amount of the third party components that are available, I'm not entirely sure I'm going to be sad. The thing that really irks me is that now I have to migrate my database.

Hm. Anybody up for a python-based CMS that uses Mambo's database? ;)

Expression nazi

[Anonymous Coward]

...backflipping on a previous policy...

After a backflip you still face the same direction.

Re:Expression nazi

[MajorDick]

Unless, you are as me uncapable of backflipping completley and land flat on your face.....

Which is what I feel Miro has dont at this point, now theyre trying to smile whilee missing some teeth .... and developers.

Re:Geez.

[pasamio]

They are coming up with a new name, they just haven't announced it yet, be patient and stay tuned to opensourcematters!

I don't Mambo

[Ranger]

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.

Re:I don't Mambo

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that there were some serious PHP security issues.

That concerns me too -- with PHP in general. PHP supporting libs and PHP apps tend to have a disproportinately high number of security issues, and locking them down is either impossible or practically so (requiring a layer of filters).

While I do not reject a web service because it is PHP based, using PHP does raise the questions;

'Is it secure enough that mere mortals can manage it safely?'

'Can it be confidently secured at all even if I put an additional level of effort into it?'

Unfortunately, the answer usually turns out to be no or a very uncertian maybe.

Keep in mind that I am not saying other web toolkits are fine and dandy; I've rejected other web services for the same reasons. It's just the % of security problems seems to be much higher. Yes, I realize that I am being highly subjective.

Re:I don't Mambo

[mikaelhg]

Plone is the most robust, secure...

Did they stop sending the cleartext username and password of the users as a mime-encoded cookie on every request already?

MIRO Gets Control... after all...

[lonemamber]

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, .

OpenSourceMatters

[mporcheron]

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.

Re:Except the devs specifically say this isn't a f

[VonSlatt]

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.

Foundation controlled by CEO I beleive

[augustz]

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.

Re:Geez.

[drakaan]

Why should we stay tuned? From all appearances, "The Developers" have done their best to marginalize themselves.

...riiiiight. *All* of the core developers leave a popular project that's been downloaded over 5 million times, and it's *them* being marginalized?

This is pretty simple.

Miro: we don't want to transfer the copyrights. We want an open source "foundation" that will "control" the project, but the copyright to everything will still be ours.

Developers: screw that, we're outta here! Oh, and we're going to work on our own version of it. Good luck.

Miro: (whispering to each other) They can just leave like that? But who's gonna...(loudly) Wait! Wait! We'll transfer the copyrights...we were wrong, and we understand now! Please come back and work for us again!

Miro realized that you probably shouldn't alienate *all* of your core developers for a popular project, if you want to keep that project alive and similarly popular. I'd stay tuned.

Re:What is the significance?

[pbailey]

I think it means that almost everyone that uses Mambo will go with the developers and upgrade to whatever they end up calling the new release when they are ready to launch. The new community up at opensourcematters.org is really gaining momentum quickly.

Not sure what this means for other CMS projects - perhaps they will gain some extra mindshare from those that are fearful of what all this means for the future of Mambo, etc. Personally, I use Mambo and I have confidence in the core developers to continue making a great product and of course it is nice that they understand what open source is all about, even if Miro/The Foundation do not.

Re:What is the significance?

[ShieldW0lf]

A better question might be, what will the CEOs of other companies considering releasing their sources make of this very high-profile example? With all the crazy spin being put on everything from both sides, it's hard to tell what the hell went on, but it sure doesn't look good to me.

If you're going to go public with a list of "community demands", they sure as hell ought to be visibly reasonable and they ought to be something you honour. If Miro is, however begrudgingly, giving in to these demands, there should be some sort of positive reaction from the community, not posting comments about how they didn't really leave over these demands but that it was a whole bunch of little things.

Perception matters, and regardless of the facts, this isn't looking good on the developers.

Re:What is the significance?

[pbailey]

Hmmm, perception does matter. That's an interesting perspective that you have, I was thinking that this really does not look good on Miro. Lol. They managed to alienate the whole dev community in one swoop. Now the question is, what is the Mambo foundation going to do with a bunch of code and no one that knows its internals. The people who know and love the code have moved on to do things they way they believe they should be done. I think I am hearing that Miro is trying to convince the world that it would be good to get a new dev team - nice try!

Re:What is the significance?

[pbailey]

Well, I think we are arguing different points here. I understand what you are saying, but I believe that Miro really dropped the ball on this one. A large community of developers has worked hard at making Mambo an award winning CMS. Miro started to offer commercial services around the product, and that is fine, companies need to make money.

But, I believe if this foundation thing had been managed properly, it would never have come to this. To totally piss off the entire core development groups to the point where they want to leave sounds to me like too many suits were involved and they didn't understand the can of worms they were opening up.

Imho, it would have been far better/easier to fully involve the core developers in how a foundation should be formed. That does not seem to be the case according to the devs. I know who I believe.

Cheers