The award winning Mambo CMS that thousands of websites are running under is in the news. Seems the company “Miro” that owns the copyright to the Mambo name have upset the entire core group of open source developers to the point were they have decided to continue developing the product separately, and in all likelihood under a new name.
This all started when Miro formed a open source foundation similar to what was formed for Mozilla development. The Mambo unpaid volunteer developers were slapped in the face when they were completely excluded from the new foundations infrastructure. This was obviously a power move by Miro to gain control of the code, and mold it so that they could once again have a product that has commercial value.
Thus late last week all of the core developers quit, and then launched a website called OpenSourceMatters.org. They will be continuing development of Mambo but under a new name at that site. Being the code is open source they are just going to continue were they left off, but are separating themselves from the power play that Miro’s founders were trying to invoke.
In an amazing post on the opensourcematters.org website several key points explain the reasons for the split.
“The Mambo Foundation was formed without regard to the concerns of the core development teams. We, the community, have no voice in its government or the future direction of Mambo. The Mambo Steering Committee made up of development team and Miro representatives authorized incorporation of the Foundation and should form the first Board. Miro CEO Peter Lamont has taken it upon himself to incorporate the Foundation and appoint the Board without consulting the two development team representatives, Andrew Eddie and Brian Teeman.”
The second major point revolves around the copyright was this statement:
“Although Mr. Lamont through the MSC promised to transfer the Mambo copyright to the Foundation, Miro now refuses to do so.”
Miro has essentially decided it can develop on it’s own without the programmers, talk about a stupid move by Mr Lamont! In addition It seems that the message forums over on the original Mambo website is in chaos, as it appears Miro is revoking posting rights, and removing post that were negative to their cause which just added fuel to the fire.
This is indeed sad as Mambo has recently won several awards because of the hard work of these developers. This should be a significant lessons to companies that try to bite the hand that feeds them.
The smoke and mirrors tactics of the new Mambo Foundation is sad example of how to destroy a community of loyal followers. They must realize now they are in deep trouble, as people have in mass moved to the developers website at OpenSourceMatters.org
The latest postings on the Mambo Foundation website is literally begging for developers to step up, and take over key positions that are now vacant. In my opinion no developer in their right mind would contribute one line of code to the Mambo Foundation.
Thanks for the head’s up Love mambo and have been using it extensivly in testing over the past few months and out of all the CMS options out there that I tested it was the best by far. Just glad that the development will follow on with the new group.