Forum Moderators: rogerd
Miro International today announced the launch of the Mambo Foundation, Inc., an independent non-profit association created to grow, support and promote the multi award-winning MamboTM content management system to its growing open source community, estimated at over five million users worldwide. Mambo continues to be Open Source and licensed under the GNU GPL.
[i-newswire.com...]
[newsforge.com...]
The developer team for Mambo, a leading content management system, has left the project over a dispute with Miro, the copyright owner. Seems Miro setup the Mambo Foundation in a much different way than the developers expected (...) The majority, if not all, active community members support the core developers team in their decision and wish to release a first stable version of the new CMS, formerly known as Mambo.
It appears that it is the entire core development team which has left the Mambo project. Luckily Mambo is GPL licensed, so the core development team can simply fork the code and produce a new version under a different name. For end users, there is a way forward with this new version, probably from the developers' new site:
The rumor is that this will yield a much more nimble project development track. Less bureaucratic red-tape to deal with.
With the huge installed base and committed developer cadre, though, it sounds like things will go forward.
Due to the recent departure of the old dev team, the programming team at Miro will continue with the development of Mambo in the interim period. We are actively recruiting for members of the community who would like to contribute as developers and moderators, and all other areas of Mambo. Should you be interested, please email...
The biggest advantage for end users is the GPL license, which effectively protects the source code from being "taken private" (for want of a better expression). Yes, all the core Mambo developers have left the project, which in effect kills the Mambo project unless Miro can find sufficient replacements or are able to support the project entirely with their own programmers. However, as the license permits reuse, the same developers can take the source, change the name to create a fork, and continue development of their fork with no interruption.
For owners of sites currently running Mambo, follow the developers and go with the new project which will come out of the opensourcematters.org site. For anyone considering Mambo, don't go for the current product as listed on the Mambo Server site, as it risks being abandonware due to lack of developer support. Either wait until the new forked project coalesces and releases their first version, wait to see whether Miro can build a new development team, or look for alternatives.
Oddly, that's what made me optimistic. Rather than the team fragmenting in a bunch of directions, it sounds like the developers are sticking together to proceed with the project (under a new name). Starry-eyed optimism, perhaps. :)
