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Mambo CMS Dev Team Splits 177

Posted by CmdrTaco from the like-a-fine-soap-opera dept.
cozimek writes "The popular Mambo CMS developer team has severed its ties with Miro Corporation, the copyright owner on the GPL'd Mambo CMS. You can read more about the renegade dev team."
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Mambo CMS Dev Team Splits More

Mambo CMS Dev Team Splits

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  • Any name suggestions? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Transcendor ( 907201 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @12:45PM (#13349159)
    mambo is dead- let lambada live! or was it tchachaha? or are any developers now not only living under a line but also dancing below one (aka Limbo)
    Conclusion: we may expect inspired names for the forks that propably descend of this
    ---
    there's only one thing worse than biting yourself in your arse. get bitten [linklike.de.vu].
  • What are the legal ramifications of this? I sure hope they don't set a precedent of involving Free/Open Source Software in questionable legal dealings...
    not like SCO didn't start that already.

    • Of course they can. (Score:5, Informative)

      by pavon ( 30274 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @01:07PM (#13349371)
      The very definition of open source software is that anyone is allowed to modify and distribute it. The GPL was created for the entire purpose of allowing this, so why would doing so be concidered "questionable legal dealings"? There are no legal ramifications whatsoever, except the possibility that they may have to change the name / logo of the project if Miro has trademarked it.
      • Not to be overly pedantic, but the GPL was created for the soul purpose of the promotion of Free software; software without ownership, giving software freedom. The Open Source movement adopted the GPL as it was compatible with Free Software.

        Whereas Free software only includes GPL'd software, Open software comprises all of the BSDs, and BSD-attached code.
      • Doesn't "Open Source" just mean the source code is freely available to everybody? I don't think it inherently implies anything about distributing derivative works. E.g. Qmail is Open Source, but not Free.
    • "What are the legal ramifications of this? I sure hope they don't set a precedent of involving Free/Open Source Software in questionable legal dealings."

      If there were legal ramifications for forking, it wouldn't be Free Software!

  • What is Mambo CMS? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jodka ( 520060 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @12:53PM (#13349243)

    You can read about what is Mambo CMS here [wikipedia.org].

    • I've worked with mambo before and found it to be one of the most bloated peices of php code i've ever seen.

      when loading a (supposedly) static page, there was more than 1000kb of included code being executed.. for a _static_ page.. that's insane. php isn't precompiled, so just imagine compiling 1meg of php every time someone requests that page..

  • Perfect timing... not (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Dynedain ( 141758 )
    Just what I need.

    I just started migrating my own site, and setting up seveal client sites using Mambo. It seemed the flexible/functional OSS CMS out there for my needs.

    Now I have to deal with a fork and worrying about patches to 2 different lines (not to mention all the plugins).

    This is not going to be fun.

    • Re:Perfect timing... not (Score:5, Funny)

      by sehryan ( 412731 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @12:57PM (#13349279)
      I guess you picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
    • Here's an idea; stick with one fork, then you only have to patch one.
      • Thats not as easy as it sounds.

        Mambo is heavily dependent on plugins to accomplish most website features (true, some of the most common needs are part of the core plugins), so if I have rolled out certain plugins for a client's needs, that aren't supported on one of the 2 forks, and other plugins for another client that isn't supported on the other fork, well... then I can't stick with only one fork now can I?

  • Erm.. a bit immature perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thrill12 ( 711899 ) * on Thursday August 18, 2005 @12:56PM (#13349269) Journal
    I looked up mamboportal.com, and saw the following:

    ...During the last month more and more users registered at our website. Since today we had more than 100,000 registered users.
    ...
    Why? Mambo's user management is very simple and has not changed much since the early days. For example Mambo uses a drop down menu in the content items to select the creator of an article. ... I gues you can imagine how long it takes to load a page with a 100,000 entrys drop down menu.
    ...
    However as I want to move forward with Mamboportal.com and the new team I decided to clear the whole userdatabase today. Every of the 100,000 registered users will be informed about that via Email the next days.
    I guess open source really does matter [opensourcematters.org] in this respect : if it doesn't work, change it yourself. Opensource will really help to mature this product even further.

  • Foundation vs. Corporation, 10 easy questions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pieterh ( 196118 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @01:02PM (#13349331) Homepage
    Q1. But forking is bad!

    A. No, not unless it splits the team, and even then competition is as good a driver as collaboration. Many of the most successful products come from forked versions that eventually out-evolved their ancestors. Homo Sapiens is a good example.

    Q2. Is it legal to start a new fork like this?

    A. The GPL guarantees this possibility. It's one of the better reasons for choosing GPL'd software - you are assured that if the product is good but the management is bad, the developers are free to continue their work.

    Q3. What about the copyrights?

    A. The copyright allows the owner to (a) define the license terms, (b) change these over time, e.g. from GPL to APL, etc., and (c) sell alternative licenses, e.g. commercial opt-out licenses for a GPL'd product.

    Q4. So the copyright owner could sell opt-out licenses for a fork?

    A. No! The forked code will now have multiple copyright owners - the new and the old code. The copyright owner can only license their own code.

    Q5. What would have happened if Mambo was licensed under a BSD-style license originally?

    A. Probably exactly the same, except that it would have forked earlier. The GPL discourages forking because it gives the copyright owners more incentive to "hold the work together" at some level.

    Q6. Is this bad for Mambo?

    A. Certainly not. It's good publicity, and a little fighting always strengthens team spirit, so long as the enemy is clear. Let's all kick the corporations!!!

    Q7. How do you know all this stuff?

    A. I don't, I'm just making it up as I go along.

    Q8. You're kidding?

    A. Yes. Gotcha!

    Q9. Is that all?

    A. Yes, I'm just trying to get to 10 questions. Maybe that was a bit ambitious. Should I go and change it to "7 easy questions"?

    Q. No, ten is a nice number.

    A. Exactly.

    • Pulling the rug out (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Marc2k ( 221814 )
      Q3. What about the copyrights?

      A. The copyright allows the owner to (a) define the license terms, (b) change these over time, e.g. from GPL to APL, etc., and (c) sell alternative licenses, e.g. commercial opt-out licenses for a GPL'd product.

      So a forked right version quite obviously would have multiple copyright holders, for the new and old code. Right? Right. What happens to the forked version if and when the copyright holder decides to re-license their code under a more stringent license? Are they now forc

      • Re:Pulling the rug out (Score:5, Informative)

        by alienw ( 585907 ) <alienw,slashdot&gmail,com> on Thursday August 18, 2005 @01:28PM (#13349582)
        Relicensing code under a more stringent license would not do anything useful. The code has already been licensed as GPL, you can't retroactively withdraw it. Since the GPL permits redistribution, the owner of the code can't do anything.

        • IANAL, but I believe a relicense would allow the copyright holder to distribute the binaries of new versions without distributing the changed source for those versions. You can't retroactively withdraw the GPL from code you've published, but you can quit using the GPL for code you hold the copyright to.

          Don't ever sign your copyrights away unless you really seriously trust the assignee, or unless you are well-paid in return.

      • Re:Pulling the rug out (Score:3, Informative)

        by Darth ( 29071 )

        So a forked right version quite obviously would have multiple copyright holders, for the new and old code. Right? Right.

        right


        What happens to the forked version if and when the copyright holder decides to re-license their code under a more stringent license?

        nothing


        Are they now forced to either license the code or drop the product?

        no. they still have a valid license to use the code they have under the GPL. The owner changing licenses has no effect on people who already have a valid license.


        What happen
      • So a forked right version quite obviously would have multiple copyright holders, for the new and old code. Right? Right. What happens to the forked version if and when the copyright holder decides to re-license their code under a more stringent license? Are they now forced to either license the code or drop the product?

        Definitely not! Once code has been released under the GPL, the copyright holder cannot later change their mind and revoke that license! Just because they offer it under an additional licens
        • Actually the copyright holder can withdraw a GPL-ed work's license.

          The catch/save/whatever you want to call it is that the GPL was what gave other people the right to copy that work and redistribute to their heart's content. The other people are however restricted to the conditions of the GPL for redistributing the work and any further changes to it. They do, however, hold copyright to the new work added in.

          This is also how a copyright holder can take a GPL'd work private with new modifications. The new
      • "What happens to the forked version if and when the copyright holder decides to re-license their code under a more stringent license?" Nothing. The "new fork" people still have a valid license (especially if they didn't do any bad things) for the fork.

        What will happen in the future is that new code laid out on the "old fork" side cannot go to the "new fork" side, but other than that, all is well.

        "Is the forked version permanently grandfathered in, so that they can continue to modify the code?" Yes. Beautifu

      • Re:Pulling the rug out (Score:5, Informative)

        by blkwolf ( 18520 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @01:39PM (#13349703) Homepage
        Once you receive a copy of the software under a specific license or terms, that can't be retro actively changed by the copyright owner (Unless that was agreed upon in a contract).

        Take SSH as an example. The original versions by Tatu Ylönen were released under a free license until version 1.2.12. After that he started adding various rescritions to his licenses until finally turning it into closed source purely commercial software.

        The OpenBSD team was able to take the last free version 1.2.12 and fork it into a new project OpenSSH which has since surpased the original SSH (now OSSH) in functionality, features and popularity.

        OpenSSH still holds some of Tatu's original code which he still owns the copyrights for, but since that code was released to the public under a free license with no restrictions on it's use, he can't now come back and tell the OpenSSH developers they can no longer use that code.
      • The way I understand it, and this makes perfect sense to me, is that anyone who has downloaded the GPLed code has licensed it, you might say, indefinitely, as there are no term restrictions in the GPL. Thus, the new license will refer from then on to anyone who wishes to license the code, but anyone who already has it under GPL...well, their license can't change because it's not allowed in the GPL. The terms of license are in the GPL, so the GPL defines the relationship completely.

        Disclaimer: I am not a law
    • Q2. Is it legal to start a new fork like this?

      A. The GPL guarantees this possibility. It's one of the better reasons for choosing GPL'd software - you are assured that if the product is good but the management is bad, the developers are free to continue their work.

      Actually, that's an attribute common to ALL free and open source licenses, not just the GPL. You can't prohibit forking and still be approved by the FSF or OSI.
      • You realise of course that the OSI and FSF are not some be-all end-all entities that define what is and isn't a free or open source license, right?

        Infact, I release this post under the terms of my own open source license, the Nimrangul License, which states:

        Copyright 2005 The Nimrangul Foundation. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that this copyright notice and statement of conditions is located in any documentation as well as derivati

    • Q1. But forking is bad!
      [...]
      Homo Sapiens is a good example [of why forking can be a good thing].

      A good example staying in the software world comes from GCC's history. In particular, the EGCS fork of the GCC compiler suite which eventually superseded the original codeline to officially regain the "GCC" moniker. Wikipedia has a nice summary of EGCS' history [wikipedia.org].

  • Foundations and VC (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gtrubetskoy ( 734033 ) * on Thursday August 18, 2005 @01:10PM (#13349413)

    This seems to me like the result of the current Open Source Hype in the investment community. Some entrepreneural types think that if they just go ahead and pay a lawyer to file the paperwork for a foundation, they instantly become like Apache and Firefox in the eyes of the VC's, and this is a clear example that it couldn't be further from the truth and that forming and maintaining a foundation for "bragging rights" ("we have formed a foundation - who-hoo!") bytes back big time.

    It'd be interesting to see what happens next - I think this foundation would have to be dissolved and will probably lose its tax-exempt status?

    • I'm a member of the Apache Software Foundation, and I don't see how it's particularly interesting to VC's (we are talking about Venture Capitalists, right?). The ASF certainly has a lot of bright people involved, but it's a non-profit. "non-profit" and "investment community" are generally two things that don't have much in common.
      • I'm a member of the Apache Software Foundation

        me too :-)

        "non-profit" and "investment community" are generally two things that don't have much in common

        I totally agree, but I'm just saying what I hear and read out there. There is this buzz that OSS is the next big thing, and in order to walk and quack like an OSS project so that you can convince investors that you're the next JBoss or MySQL you need a foundation it seems.

  • A Good Thing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zecg ( 521666 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @01:10PM (#13349414)
    Though this situation will undoubtedly be used by certain pundits and businesses as cannon fodder against OSS, I think it only goes to show how the GPL empowers those who do the work. If the entire team (i.e. "the workers") get up, say "thank you" and fork the code, things like brand name, copyright and such suddenly become completely useless.

    It's knowledgeable people that are the only true resource in the case - let's see Miro just replace all of them overnight and beat the forked version this team will be working on.

  • Open source of free software? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The Bungi ( 221687 ) <thebungi@gmail.com> on Thursday August 18, 2005 @01:12PM (#13349429) Homepage
    "Open source matters", a snippet about "free as in freedom" and a link to gnu.org - and the OSI logo below with no link to OSI itself.

    Let me put on the hat of a CIO or small business owner who has some infrastructure built around Mambo (which BTW is along with e107, XOOPS and Plone one of the absolute best FLOSS CMS packages) - I've heard that "free software" is not the same as "open source", along with RMS taking potshots at ESR and viceversa, with Bruce Perens standing in the middle yelling "it's all OK folks, don't panic!" and here I have the "core developers" of this otherwise excellent CMS apparently can't tell their two philosophies apart, but they've forked the project nonetheless. The next time I need to upgrade or patch things should be fun.

    Pity. Plone and a host of other projects have successfully transitioned from hobby operations to foundations, but apparently this time something went wrong. Perhaps Miro got too greedy for their own good.

    Well, at least they have the option of forking.

  • Mambo license (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mrcparker ( 469158 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @02:04PM (#13349937)
    http://mambo-foundation.org/content/view/4/45/ [mambo-foundation.org]

    So with regard to Mambo, the GPL and copyright:
    You MAY distribute it and charge for that service. You MAY change it, add design and content to it and you MAY charge for that. You may NOT alter the license and you must NOT alter the copyright. You do NOT have to show a 'Powered by Mambo' graphic, as it not a copyright notice.

    In other words, you must NOT pretend that Mambo is yours, and you must NOT charge people for Mambo iteself.

    I thought that GPL software could be sold as long as the source was attached.
    • You can charge for distribution (as it says at the beginning) but you can't make out to the client that they are somehow buying the software - they're not and they can't. They're just paying you for the service of producing a copy.
      • Bull. Of course you can sell the software. Only after that you cannot make them pay for the source. From the GPL FAQ: [gnu.org]

        Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?
        Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)
        • Bull. Of course you can sell the software. Only after that you cannot make them pay for the source.

          This is true -- but keep in mind that because you're distributing under the GPL, it's usually silly to charge a lot for it, because the people you sell it to have the right to give it away for free. This is a very important aspect. From the same FAQ:

          If I distribute GPL'd software for a fee, am I required to also make it available to the public without a charge?
          No. However, if someone pays your fee and gets
        • Um, Radish's statement was, "They're just paying you for the service of producing a copy." How does that strike you as at odds with the very thing you just quoted ("The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software")?

          It's great to leap to defend the GPL, but the distinction between "selling a copy of the software" and "selling the service of producing copies of the software" is a matter of semantics. In either case, what you're buying is the convenience entailed by packaged distribution of
        • *sigh*

          You can sell COPIES of the software - you cannot sell the software ITSELF. That's exactly what I said.
        • Bull. Of course you can sell the software.

          Let's be clear here. You can sell *copies* of the software. A CD, or a download, or whatever. What you can't sell is the software itself, which means the copyright to it. For example, you can own as many copies of MS Office as you like, but you can't say that MS Office is "yours", because clearly MS own the rights to it.

          Graham.

    • Re:Mambo license (Score:3, Informative)

      by aCC ( 10513 ) *

      >> In other words, you must NOT pretend that Mambo
      >> is yours, and you must NOT charge people for
      >> Mambo iteself.

      > I thought that GPL software could be sold as
      > long as the source was attached.

      Yes, and you're right. You can sell the software for whatever price you'd like, but you MUST keep it under GPL licence which means you have to provide the source and the people who paid you money can again sell it or give it away. You CAN'T relicence the program if you don't have the COMPLETE

  • All these replies (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by aftk2 ( 556992 )
    and not one standard Slashdot grammar tirade...even though it's warranted?

    The popular Mambo CMS developer team has severed its ties with Miro Corporation

    Really? Would it have been so difficult to write "The developer team behind the popular Mambo CMS has severed ties with Miro Corporation" ? The way it's worded now, it sounds like it's the team that's popular.

    Maybe I'm wrong though. Maybe the Mambo developers sport slick haircuts, get good grades, drive sweet cars, hang out with the jocks but stil

  • 'Foundations' have this weird stench to them (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Thursday August 18, 2005 @02:37PM (#13350211)
    When I heard about this Mambo foundation thing I thought "Oh, so your ripping of the crappy part of the Typo3 development hype here in germany". Just months after this strange T3 Foundation popped up.
    Mambo is the best looking OSS CMS but it has it's lasting issues with usability. Building a Foundation won't change that, have people ignore it and pump up the turnover with Miro services.
    Time and time again I've considered getting down with Mambo improvement but I was hesitant that Mambo quirks persisted so long for a reason and that deving would've meant forking Mambo right from the get-go.
    Bingo.
    I'm glad that is settled now.
    Now if the Typo3 folks calm down again and see to it going PHP 5 and OOP without wasting too much time with a 'foundation' and its various costly 'membership options', we can get back to work and have two PHP CMSes to rule them all.

    Time to join the [fill in Mambos new name here] Team.

    BTW, there are OSS projects that actually benefit from a foundation. One's the former commercial 3D Package Blender. Ton Roosendahl uses the Blender Stichting as a versatile tool to pull larger Blender development and project stunts. It's tied to a tight knitt team of all-time participants and lacks a pesky babble and paper-releasing faction. A very good example for an OSS foundation that works.
    • Are you saying the Mozilla "Foundation" [mozilla.org] has some kind of "weird stench" to it??? Foundations aren't good or bad, the reasons they are formed are.

      The aim of most OSS projects forming "Foundations" is to make their projects more appealing to corporate interests. The Mozilla Foundation has been nothing but good for Mozilla and Firefox. As a matter of fact, Firefox gained its current popularity after the "split" from Netscape/AOL...

  • As a seasoned Mambo developer... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by skelly33 ( 891182 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @03:00PM (#13350391)
    ... this doesn't bother me one bit. While this is an opportunity for the Mambo developers to get their act together and formalize the development process in an effort to bring some much needed stability to the platform definition, personally it doesn't make a spit of difference to me because I gave up on using it for anything more than a session management and user registration framework - everything else is custom code, so it doesn't matter how many additional patches, plugins and whatever else they come up with for a new branch because I won't use any of it. Mambo was exciting to me at first because of all the plugins and thrid party support for the platform, but...

    I since discovered that the lack of a clearly defined specification for the platform has done away with the concept of backward compatability which depracates and/or orphans modules, plugins and "API" coding conventions for module developers nearly every other release. This process has resulted in a complete failure to amass wide-spread availability of compatible module/component/plugin support. After spending a couple weeks fine tuning my first Mambo installation only so see a new release with a CRITICAL security patch which was no longer compatible with any of the components/modules I was using, I gave up trying to keep up.

    So all legalities aside, this is an opportunity for the new and improved Mambo team to put together a new and improved product that is worthy of third party developers' time.

  • At the end of the day what does it matter?

    The current release does all my clients need or will ever need for a run of the mill site. I make my living using mambo, oscommerce and zencart and customising to the need of my clients.

    The codebase has it's problems but for "free" is more than I could have accomplished in years.

    My clients will still be happy when I say "Yes I can do that" to a complicated brief and have a fully working CMS skinned within a week with more "features" than they could possibly use. For

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