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Software GNU is Not Unix

Mambo Foundation Gets Copyright, After All 98

Posted by Hemos from the further-updates-as-events-warrant dept.
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."
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Mambo Foundation Gets Copyright, After All More

Mambo Foundation Gets Copyright, After All

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  • 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.

    • Re:Geez. (Score:4, Informative)

      by pasamio ( 737659 ) on Monday August 22, 2005 @12:06PM (#13372438) Homepage
      They are coming up with a new name, they just haven't announced it yet, be patient and stay tuned to opensourcematters!
      • They are coming up with a new name, ...

        Just as long as they don't claim something like Tango or Polka or Waltz. I'd hate to be dragged off the dance floor and charged with copyright infringement, right there in front of my partner.

        I learned Mambo in a class 25 years ago, but I've never had an opportunity to use it siince then, so it's OK if they lay claim to that name.

    • Common courtesy plus trademark law. :)

  • Except the devs specifically say this isn't a fork (Score:5, Informative)

    by misha69 ( 887844 ) on Monday August 22, 2005 @11:45AM (#13372311)
    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'.

  • Question (Score:2, Funny)

    by Spy der Mann ( 805235 )
    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 system works, life goes on. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Njall ( 132366 ) on Monday August 22, 2005 @11:49AM (#13372345)
    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.
  • 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?

  • There is no Core members in the MF (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 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 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Deffexor ( 230167 ) on Monday August 22, 2005 @12:01PM (#13372412)

    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 [opensourcematters.org]

    Disclosure: Yes, I'm the one who wrote the Mambo developer exodus report [arstechnica.com] on Ars Technica.

    • Re:Empty gesture (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Deusy ( 455433 )
      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?
  • Just curious... How will this impact Mambo, and other CMS's to come?
    • 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 ma
    • 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 s
      • 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
        • Look at it this way. You're considering opening up some source code to the community and giving them some resources to work with, but you'd like to have some involvement in the new project and you'd like to be able to have it compliment what your other code bases. You see Sun and IBM and SAP doing these things, and it seems to be working well for them. So you try to draw on their example in setting things up.

          Then after you've opened your source and set all these structures up, the developers unite, negot
          • 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 w

  • forking.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rd4tech ( 711615 ) * on Monday August 22, 2005 @12:03PM (#13372422)
    kids, it's the true power the developers have in the open source projects... now for the next lesson: sales.
    • kids, it's the true power the developers have in the open source projects... now for the next lesson: sales

      Open source companies sell packaging and services, not code. And your point is?

  • This is too little too late (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pasamio ( 737659 ) on Monday August 22, 2005 @12:03PM (#13372424) Homepage
    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.
    • Isn't it AMAZING how no matter what evil companies do, open source always loses? Mambo is totally WORTHLESS now isn't it? Miro really screwed the entire world with this move huh?

      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.

      • Re:This is too little too late (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anthony Boyd ( 242971 ) on Monday August 22, 2005 @02:25PM (#13373404) Homepage
        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 [mamboforge.net] (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.

    • 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 en

  • I don't Mambo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ranger ( 1783 ) on Monday August 22, 2005 @12:10PM (#13372452) Homepage
    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 [plone.org] 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 (Score:2, Interesting)

      by 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

      • So what your saying is that there is a lack of good programmers doing php work?

        Because these are not php issues, but rather programming issues. Which means you are saying the quality of work that common php devs write is less then the quality of work that other devs write.

    • Re:I don't Mambo (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mikaelhg ( 47691 )
      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?
      • Did they stop sending the cleartext username and password of the users as a mime-encoded cookie on every request already.

        I normally don't feed the trolls, but since this is our system: Encoding is a policy decision you make when you install a Plone site, you can easily use SHA-1 if you want. Normally people authenticate against LDAP or some sort of database, where we really shouldn't be dictating their encoding. It's a policy decision, and if you want encrypt it, you can.

        • Um, shouldn't SHA-1 be considered "broken" for all intents and purposes?

          Can you use SHA-(something else)?

          or even a non-SHA hash?

          • pre-image-attacks (you have a hash, search the original string) are impossible atm, even against md5. but it is (possibly) possible to find two strings/.../whatever that have the same hash-sum...
        • Well, excuse me for taking the word of Plone consultants that Plone is ready for prime time, putting tens of thousands of euros in development, and then finding out it's not worth shit unless you're willing to keep on paying through the nose to the hard-to-find consultants who have actually read through the whole Zope and Plone codebase (because unlike with the better competing systems, the documentation is really the worst I've seen during my years of practise,) and even then it's unscalable, slow and brea
    • I suggest you look into typo3 [typo3.org], it changed my opinion about php cms'
    • I think PHP is great, but I don't think it's quite ready for a robust content management system.

      If PHP isn't ready by now, then it never will be ready enough for you.. PHP has matured a great deal. Most of the problems that people blame on PHP are due to web designers developing applications. By web designers I mean people who traditionally designed web pages using somthing like homesite and have little to no coding experience. PHP came along and was straightforward enough for them to slap some dyn
    • Stamp Out Literacy.com [stampoutliteracy.com] uses Mambo and the writers couldn't be happier.

      Most of the security issues aren't that significant. Mambo is so versitile, patching it doesn't break anything (largely because just about everything you can imagine can be handled without modifying the PHP).

      As someone who has written his own CMS (See for yourself [blargatron-systems.com]), and has tried just about every single one out there (including PHPBB with a portal I wrote myself [tenthousandpercent.com]), I think Mambo's probably the best solution for me and most of my clients.
    • As much as Plone seems great and wonderful, I installed it and couldn't figure out how the hell to access it or set it up. Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather have a CMS that's easy to setup and sits quite transparently on top of the excellent Apache/PHP base.
    • I'd say PHP is ready but the vast majority of PHP developers aren't. PHP5's clone of Java's object model means that a PHP application can consist of solid maintainable code, but even simple object programming is beyond most PHP coders never mind design patterns.
    • With a good CMS you don't have much scripts to the outside user. A CMS is made for mostly static content. The tranformation to HTML and stuff like that can be made with some CLI tools. And you'll get static pages, which are a vulnerable as your webserver.

      The heavy scripting part in a CMS is in the backend stuff. That's what your editors and other staff gets to see. This stuff should be in a seperate space, or even a seperate server. The only user who is able to attack these scripts are you and your editors

  • MIRO Gets Control... after all... (Score:3, Informative)

    by lonemamber ( 908386 ) on Monday August 22, 2005 @12:12PM (#13372463) Homepage
    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 [blogspot.com]

    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...
  • 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 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mporcheron ( 897755 )
    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.

  • Foundation controlled by CEO I beleive (Score:3, Interesting)

    by augustz ( 18082 ) on Monday August 22, 2005 @12:44PM (#13372624)
    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.
  • 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.
    • Whether this "Mambo Foundation" will simply "fork" each of the successive releases by these folks and sell it as their own

      which would be entirely fair...

      thereby reducing their R&D budget to nearly zero

      You underestimate the steadily increasing cost of merging against a diverging code base. Or if it is to be an identical code base, then the reason for not using the original is what, exactly?

      Note that Miro or its proxy foundation will not own the exclusive copyright any more if they take outside code with
      • Who said it would be "merging". I'm saying just fork every god damn release, clean, unmodified, and change a thing or two to make it look legitimate.
        • Who said it would be "merging". I'm saying just fork every god damn release, clean, unmodified, and change a thing or two to make it look legitimate

          What do you mean, "look legitimate"? It is legitimate, so long as they don't go filing off anybody's copyright notices.
  • and I still don't know what the hell it's talking about. What is Mambo? What is Miro?
    • Miro made Mambo in 1999 and in 2000 they released it as GPL. Miro forked the project back then creating MamboCMS (now called Jango) and Mambo Open Source. Mambo Open Source (now just Mambo) is a complex CMS made to make running a website as simple as possible.

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