Legitimate code stealing and OSS

Today a man named Brian Connolly posted an open letter to users of the Mambo content management system, threatening them with civil and criminal action if they continue to use Mambo. He claims that the Mambo project contains proprietary, copyrighted code that belongs to him and is currently in use in his customized Furthermore CMS. Is this the little brother of the SCO debacle, or a legitimate copyright infringement claim?

The wording at the beginning of the open letter is pretty harsh:

If you are presently using the software application “Mambo OS” in any release post October 3, 2003, you and your organization are potentially exposed to CIVIL LITIGATION and possibly CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.

The message goes on to say that the code in question comprises the lead story block -- a block being a dynamically generated section of a Web page that has code separate from the main page. Content management systems use blocks to create and extend dynamic, database-driven Web sites. Another portion of code was illegally donated from Furthermore that allows easier administration of the front page.

"This is much worse than SCO," Connelly told me today. "But I don't have millions of dollars to go out and sue everyone. SCO and IBM are the big guys, but down here in the trenches is where it's happening and we don't have a forum to resolve this kind of problem. The Mambo people have been uncooperative."

The problem doesn't really start with Mambo, though, or its parent company, Australia-based Miro International. The trouble started with a man named Emir Sakic, who was contracted by Brian Connolly to make some proprietary modules for and modifications to Mambo that made it look like a newspaper portal, as shown on the Furthermore home page. Eventually it got so that Mambo and Furthermore had divergent code bases that made them almost into different programs. Connolly says that Sakic then modified the Mambo code so that it would use Furthermore's proprietary modules, and illegally gave the project one of Furthermore's blocks -- the lead story block -- and modified the back end. Mambo was given functionality from Furthermore that it did not have before.

Sakic contacted Connolly by email and asked him after the fact if he could put this code under the GPL. Connolly, of course, said no -- but it was too late.

Modifying, hosting, monitoring, and administrating open-source and proprietary CMS software is by no means an illigitimate or unethical practice -- this is what Brian Connolly does, and he's far from being the pioneer in this industry. Since the users or customers are essentially paying a company like Brian's to custom-design a Web site for them, the issue of licensing doesn't come up -- customers are not being given software and they are not purchasing software, they are purchasing a service which is delivered dynamically through software and software development.

So of course this makes Connolly upset that code he developed to sell services has been misappropriated. According to Brian, Emir Sakic admitted clearly in his email to Connolly that he'd donated this code to Mambo, but at that point the damage had been done. Upset, Connolly called the Open Source Software Institute to seek assistance with the matter.

Meanwhile the Mambo community of course had a discussion on the matter (this is one of several threads) with a general irreverance toward Brian Connolly and his claims of copyright infringement, and the usual flippant remarks and misguided legal analysis that can be found on nearly any blog or forum that discusses such matters. The forum posts in the above-referenced thread paint an entirely different picture than what Connolly himself offers, but in the end it appears that in the new version of Mambo -- 4.5.1 -- the lead story block has been recoded in an effort to resolve the matter.

The story doesn't stop there. Connolly found about a dozen companies that were using a tainted version of Mambo and asked them to stop using the program entirely. One complied, and even offered a settlement check as compensation for their unwitting error. The remaining companies did not comply or complied in ways that were not satisfactory to Connolly.

Upon contacting the OSSI, Brian spoke with John Weathersby, the Executive Director of the institute, who in turn spoke with Larry Rosen briefly. According to Weathersby, Rosen would not comment on the matter at the time because he needed to see the whole picture and talk to everyone involved. The only advice Rosen could offer was to get a lawyer to deal properly with the issue. No one recommended suing or threatening end-users.

Weathersby agreed to act as a sort of mediator in the dispute, but didn't have the chance to talk to the Mambo project members about the issue. "We've got to address this in a level-headed, business-minded way. I'd like to see everyone calm down, put all documents on the table, see everybody's cards, and resolve this."

But by that point things had already gone too far; the Mambo community was far from cooperative, Emir Sakic had more or less gotten away with stealing code that he was paid to develop, and competitors were allowed to take advantage of the situation.

NewsForge was unable to contact Emir Sakic to seek comment on the matter at the time of publication, but Connolly says that Sakic admitted what he'd done in email. According to Connolly, Sakic was contracted for about eight months to assist in development of Furthermore. He was paid for his services and at no time did Brian Connolly ever tell Sakic that he was free to donate any code.

"If it is as he says, and they do have his code in Mambo, that's not right," Weathersby told us Friday afternoon. But at no time did either he or Larry Rosen advise Brian Connolly to post his notice about suing end-users of Mambo. "That's... not prudent," said Weathersby. "Every site I have -- including the OSSI homepage -- runs on Mambo."