Mambo Open Source Development Team - Letter to the community - Discussion

[TitanKing]

How about ThinkCMS ?

[downunder]

In keeping with the music theme and hence its heritage maybe Rumba. But this is through my liking of Bundy (the rum). Or OpenMambo or MOS or MambOS or EagleCMS or .... really it does not matter as long as it survives as an example of the true Open Source CMS

[Tony Reid]

How about..

Breeze or BreezeCMS
HotWire
Endeavor

[Elpie]

Hey guys, there is an "official" thread where the core team have asked for name suggestions.  I'm not sure they would necessarily see your suggestions if you keep posting them here, in "Letter to the Community Discussion" - just a thought.
http://forum.opensourcematters.org/inde ... 272.0.html

[digitalartist]

Hi,
  I'm just a visitor from e107 but I and several others of us believe that the mambo core team has made the right decision.  We applaud their courage and wish them and the entire community, the best of luck.

DA

[rdb]

Just one more voice supporting the core dev team's principled stand. Opensource is more than a way to create software; It is a community, it is a philosophy and in some sense its a way of life.

Its good to take stand up for something that you believe in.

As soon as a donate button goes up I'll send mine in to help support the cause.

Viva MOS CMS
M(ambo) is O(pen) S(ource) CMS


Richard Baldwin

[Matthew Schultz]

Hell, if you wanted to, you could completely take over the foundation and divorce it from Miro if you wanted to, and had enough support from the other members to do so.

If the community is so much in agreement, it seems like it would have been a cakewalk to simply change the foundation to whatever you wanted.

"Ordinary Members are individuals that share a common interest in Mambo and who want to support the Mambo Foundation... The annual membership fee for Ordinary members is US$10.00"

So just to be a "Member" is 10 bucks, not bad.

"Strategic Members are companies that work with Mambo either as a users developing websites, or that include Mambo as a part of their own offering. They are companies that view Mambo as an important part of their corporate, product or services strategy, and who want to participate in the development of the Mambo Project. There is no obligation to become a strategic member unless you want to participate in the developmental and strategic direction of Mambo."

The annual membership fee for Strategic Members is US$50,000. Plus you have to be a company.

To me it just looks like Miro is heading in one direction and the Dev's in another.

[nathandiehl]

Hell, if you wanted to, you could completely take over the foundation and divorce it from Miro if you wanted to, and had enough support from the other members to do so.

If the community is so much in agreement, it seems like it would have been a cakewalk to simply change the foundation to whatever you wanted.

"Ordinary Members are individuals that share a common interest in Mambo and who want to support the Mambo Foundation... The annual membership fee for Ordinary members is US$10.00"

So just to be a "Member" is 10 bucks, not bad.

"Strategic Members are companies that work with Mambo either as a users developing websites, or that include Mambo as a part of their own offering. They are companies that view Mambo as an important part of their corporate, product or services strategy, and who want to participate in the development of the Mambo Project. There is no obligation to become a strategic member unless you want to participate in the developmental and strategic direction of Mambo."

The annual membership fee for Strategic Members is US$50,000. Plus you have to be a company.

To me it just looks like Miro is heading in one direction and the Dev's in another.

part of the agreement to be a member is to agree to fully support mambo...so if you rise up, they can just kick you off long before you can organize a takeover. they've thought the business -side through...(they just don't give a rip about people)

[MyJC]

Hell, if you wanted to, you could completely take over the foundation and divorce it from Miro if you wanted to, and had enough support from the other members to do so.

If the community is so much in agreement, it seems like it would have been a cakewalk to simply change the foundation to whatever you wanted.

"Ordinary Members are individuals that share a common interest in Mambo and who want to support the Mambo Foundation... The annual membership fee for Ordinary members is US$10.00"

So just to be a "Member" is 10 bucks, not bad.

"Strategic Members are companies that work with Mambo either as a users developing websites, or that include Mambo as a part of their own offering. They are companies that view Mambo as an important part of their corporate, product or services strategy, and who want to participate in the development of the Mambo Project. There is no obligation to become a strategic member unless you want to participate in the developmental and strategic direction of Mambo."

The annual membership fee for Strategic Members is US$50,000. Plus you have to be a company.

To me it just looks like Miro is heading in one direction and the Dev's in another.

part of the agreement to be a member is to agree to fully support mambo...so if you rise up, they can just kick you off long before you can organize a takeover. they've thought the business -side through...(they just don't give a rip about people)

...and you can be fined $500 for behavior not befitting a member. I wonder who gets to define what is or is not appropriate behavior?

wr

[King7]

After reading a lot in this forum and the forum at mamboserver, I give my full support at the dev team. Open source matters, indeed.

Just my 2c

[4PLaY]

One more for the CORE DEV TEAM! you have my full support.

I am new to mambo, installed it, played with it, LOVING IT.

Being new to this and all, I was a little scared and it took more than a minute to finally understand what was going on.
Afraid, that was what I was, I'm some sort of a veteran webdev team director, although I know my stuff, mambo just made my life easier, and the more I used it, the more difficult it was to part with it. My site is currently in development and in fact it just went up not more than a week now.

You'll have a banner, a button, & a link wherever, & whenever possible in my site!

KUDOS to the Dev Team.

[howdwegethere]

Duh!

I turned my back for a couple of weeks and half the community upped and walked out? How'd that happen.

I've been reading a little of the threads, but when I saw one poster say they had spent 2 hours reading it all and they had signed up over here, I figure that's two hours I can skip.. so here I am... 

[Cryztal]

Hi and thanks for having me onboard!

As most of this new project's users, i support your decition 100%. Can't wait to get started!

Best of luck, ill be sure to help everywhere i can.

[Chris.Stead]

A brave decision, and really admirable that the core team is completely united in this. I find it hard to get a handle on whats really going on behind the scenes, but the fact that the core team have pulled out en-masse is strangely comforting.

Total respect for taking a stand and taking bold action.

I worry that bickering between the 2 camps will sap the energy of the team and the community, and that "the CMS formerly known as Mambo" will grow in 2 incompatible directions leaving 3rd party developers having to choose which one to support. I hope this doesn't reduce the range and scope of 3rd party add-ons in the future.

OpenSourceMatters is a reality now, and the real test is going to be whether enough vision/commitment/funding/infrastructure exists to plan, build and deliver a really good new version of "the CMS formerly known as Mambo".

Whether what you've done was right or not really doesn't matter; you've done it now, so good luck to you. I really hope this works, and I'm looking forward to the next release a.s.a.p. - best make it a good 'un  .

[LaurieC]

It's comforting to see the community rally around the dev team with such support and conviction! I too am behind you 100% and will add a banner/link/statement to my site.

[Terenzusum]

long live the *ambo devs

[magicbox]

keep the best work~~~

[costa man]

Dev Team - way to go...

A brave decision and I am sure not taken lightly.  You have my 100% support all be it just one more of a silent majority.

My only hope is that the non core developers of components, modules and other addons rally behind the core team.

I would not be surprised to see a concerted effort by the Moundation to contact these developers and try to enntice them to the dark side with the lure of $.  The $ are important - we all have to live - but at what cost - certainly a lack of freedom, inspiration of others and team working.  It would also mean anonimity for the developers which might mean less money in the long term!

IHMO there should be a concerted effort to try to mirror mamboforge -  if they take it down xor start to control access  -  then you can kiss any new open source developement goodbye overnight if there is not a suitable repository.  Perhaps pro tem Sourceforge could be used? 

As the core team are silent (and probably for good reason) others should take the iniative and try to rebuild.  Why not put a donate button on this site?  Any funds could go to hosting at the least.

Good luck

[keliix06]

Hosting is being provided free of charge, but you are certainly welcome to save up some money until there is a donate button available

The devs have a new version of the forge in the works, just need a bit of patience. See http://www.opensourcematters.org/index. ... &Itemid=29 for more info.

[bluevoodu]

being this topic is so large... I hope no one else posted this.

So you are going to be making another version still under the GNU?  Is that possible since mambo is being taken over by a company?

We just started working with Mambo and want to continue with it *integrating it heavily with our site... forums..etc*  and I am curious as to how this is going to work now.  Will you all set up a seperate site and continue the project?
I don't want to put my time into developing mambo and then I have to upgrade to the "corporate" version to get the new updates and what not.

Or what is going to happen?

Bv :hat

[keliix06]

It will remain GPL. See http://www.opensourcematters.org/index. ... &Itemid=29

[Ishmael]

First of all, let me congratulate you on your stand. I do applaud your ethics and intentions.

That being said, it's time for some hard questions (Pardon if I repeat any that have been asked before, I only read to page 14 or so.) I have some serious concerns in that I have several serious sites (revenue wise) based on  Mambo. I have two sites that are seasonal and that season starts in Sept. Your timing couldn't have been worse from my perspective, but that's a selfish outlook. The timing would never be very good. Regardless, I'm at a crux here.

I understand your committment, but I also understand that people live in the real world, have families to feed, and bills to pay. I don't presume to think that all, or any, of the core team are independently wealthy. Cash flow, or lack thereof, effects everyone.

So here we go:

1. What code belongs to Miro. Yes, I realize that it was done under the GNU license, but is a protracted legal action by Miro anticipated?

2. Will you be able to bring the other independent developers with you? And will the components and modules available at the other site be available here as well?

3. I'm anticipating upgrading to 4.5.2.3. Is that the code you are in possesion of? If not, does that release represent a potential "fork" in the developement path? (I'm not concerned about what you call your new effort, I am very interested what rev. you are going to use as a baseline.)

4. What is your planned time frame for a full cut over to this new entity? Some indication of plans and schedules would be really nice. (As well as a darn good indication that you have some direction in mind.)

If you don't want to answer here in the forum, feel free to email me.

[keliix06]

1) At the current moment it is all copyright Miro. Since it was released GPL they have no legal recourse to keep anyone from starting a new project based on it as long as the terms of the GPL license are followed. My guess it the reason we haven't seen the 4.5.2.4 release yet is the core team is busy with the lawyers making sure it fully complies.

2) The developers of most major projects are supporting this new initiative. It will be up to the individual developers to decide which version(s) to support as incompatabilities are bound to happen once a couple more releases are made.

3) The download available on this site is Mambo 4.5.2.3. The next release will be 4.5.2.4 which sounds mostly like a copyright change. The next full release will be what would have been Mambo 4.5.3.

4) I can't speak to this.

[Ishmael]

1) At the current moment it is all copyright Miro. Since it was released GPL they have no legal recourse to keep anyone from starting a new project based on it as long as the terms of the GPL license are followed. My guess it the reason we haven't seen the 4.5.2.4 release yet is the core team is busy with the lawyers making sure it fully complies.

2) The developers of most major projects are supporting this new initiative. It will be up to the individual developers to decide which version(s) to support as incompatabilities are bound to happen once a couple more releases are made.

3) The download available on this site is Mambo 4.5.2.3. The next release will be 4.5.2.4 which sounds mostly like a copyright change. The next full release will be what would have been Mambo 4.5.3.

4) I can't speak to this.

Thank you for the reply Kelix.

[rootropy]

1) At the current moment it is all copyright Miro. Since it was released GPL they have no legal recourse to keep anyone from starting a new project based on it as long as the terms of the GPL license are followed. My guess it the reason we haven't seen the 4.5.2.4 release yet is the core team is busy with the lawyers making sure it fully complies.

Why is all the code copyrighted to Miro? I'm not a lawyer, but I've read recently the book "Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing", and If I didn't misunderstand, the person who contributes with each piece of code has the intellectual property (copyright) of his code.

Miro developed some code a long time ago...and the rest has been contributed by another people who retains the copyright of his lines of code. The problem is nowadays, and even when GPL license says so, nobody includes a copyright notice about their lines..., nor says what are their lines...

Thanks for attention

[jdcope]

Why is all the code copyrighted to Miro? ...the person who contributes with each piece of code has the intellectual property (copyright) of his code.

True, but the contributor can assign copyright to someone else if he or she wishes. I'm guessing the developers found it convenient to have a single entity hold all the copyrights. That would simplify licensing. Say the developers wanted to release later versions under the Apache license instead of GPL. They wouldn't have to hunt down every developer who ever worked on the project and get his or her permission first, they just need "Miro's" permission.

Of course, if I understand things correctly, they're now forever locked into GPL for future releases unless Miro gives them permission to relicense. I don't think anyone is going to have a problem with that, since GPL is so permissive.

[keliix06]

It's not a matter of convinience. The core team all signed documents that assigned copyright to Miro. The title of the document escapes me right now but it did have the word joint in it, so that may be one of the things they are figuring our with their lawyers right now.

[pointri]

I support and applaud the dev team's stand, and eagerly look forward to future developments of the project formerly known as Mambo. 

I must be the quintessential average joe user at the moment, but I recognize the importance of open source community and contribution.  I have the efforts of the core dev team and what appears to be thousands of innovators, developers, guides and users to thank for making such a powerful product accessible to me and many other average joe users who aspire to help make it even better in ways they can.

[Clay]

Consider this another voice in the crowd of support for the decision y'all made (which I'm sure wasn't an easy one).  I think one of the most brilliant things about Mambo was the opensource community that evolved around it.  Sounds like what Miro was doing would put a stop to that, or at least kill the spirit of it.

Can't wait to see what awesome name you come up with!!

[spacemonkey]

It's not a matter of convinience. The core team all signed documents that assigned copyright to Miro. The title of the document escapes me right now but it did have the word joint in it, so that may be one of the things they are figuring our with their lawyers right now.

CORRECTION: some of the developers signed a joint copyright agreement with Miro. But since everything has been released under the GPL, even the copyright is rendered mostly insignificant.

Thanks to the GPL, we are all free to take the existing Mambo and move forward, with no legal risk or obligation other than to honor the GPL requirements. The only thing that must change is the name, which we are working on at the moment.