The woof and the warp weblog about web stuff.

Mambo Open Source Development Team - Letter to the community

Much has been said about the Mambo Open Source project and the establishment of the Mambo Foundation to benefit the future of Mambo.

We, the core development teams, unanimously believe:

• An open source project is about people producing free and open software and contributing to something as a team for the benefit of others.
• Open source projects reflect the spirit of collaboration and fun while garnering community feedback and providing good governance that allows for business to confidently invest in its development.
• Open source projects are open to the participation of anybody who can contribute value and is willing to work with the community.

We, the development team, have serious concerns about the Mambo Foundation and its relationship to the community. We believe the future of Mambo should be controlled by the demands of its users and the abilities of its developers. The Mambo Foundation is designed to grant that control to Miro, a design that makes cooperation between the Foundation and the community impossible.

• 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.
• Although Mr. Lamont through the MSC promised to transfer the Mambo copyright to the Foundation, Miro now refuses to do so.

What we will do: We will continue to develop and improve a version of this award-winning software project currently released under the GNU General Public License. We wish Miro and the Mambo Foundation well and regret that we are not able to work with them.

We have retained the Software Freedom Law Center to advise us in this matter and will release more information about our short-term plan in the near future.