This past August, a group of developers associated with the Mambo open source content management system decided to fork the project and start Joomla!, citing too much corporate control over Mambo by the Australian company that founded and funded it, Miro International. Since then, misinformation has spread like a wildfire around the Internet, and many Mambo users are left wondering what really happened and if they should switch to Joomla. If you find yourself confused by the whole Mambo/Joomla! fiasco, this article's for you.

Ed. note: while the official project name is Joomla!, in the interest of readability we'll be referring to the Joomla! project without the exclamation mark throughout this article.

A brief timeline of events

The story begins where, publicly, it left off: with the Brian Connolly attack on Mambo, its corporate sponsor Miro International, and individual developers and participants therein. It may have only been the battle du jour for Connolly, but many of the people involved with Mambo felt that the project needed more protection against similar attacks in the future. Miro had been providing that protection up until then, using its own resources.

Corporate sponsorship of an open source project is by no means new or unheard of. Sun Microsystems opened the source code to StarOffice years ago, creating the OpenOffice.org project from it. It was the largest donation of source code to the open source software community in history, and its approximately 10 million lines of code comprise the largest open source program in the world -- larger even than the Linux kernel. The vast majority of the active developers working on the project work for Sun. There's also the popular Eclipse development environment, which was originally developed and then open-sourced by IBM, but is now controlled by the Eclipse Foundation, a not-for-profit organization. And who can forget that Red Hat sponsors the free software Fedora Core operating system?

After Connolly's attacks ceased, Robert Castley, who was responsible for the original resurgence of Mambo, suddenly stepped down as the project's lead developer, and Mambo contributor Andrew Eddie took over. According to several Joomla developers, the collecting of ad revenue from the Mambo sites that Miro hosted seems to be the chief bone of contention that started trouble between the Mambo core team and Miro International.

Some of the Mambo core developers had an idea for a non-profit Mambo Foundation to hold and control Mambo, and Andrew Eddie presented it to Miro CEO Peter Lamont over the phone. Although at first reluctant to give up Mambo, Lamont says that he came to think of it as a good idea after some consideration. Before long, the issue of who would hold the copyrights to the Mambo code came up. Ultimately it turned into a dispute, and caused the project to fork. Lamont told me, "I had invested many hundreds of thousands of dollars in Mambo over the years and a decision to assign the IP was not something I consider lightly. I also felt the [Mambo] foundation was not necessary as we had funded Mambo and taken a back seat for many years and that everyone seemed perfectly happy with the way it was." But both Peter Lamont and the Mambo core team believed that changes did need to take place in the way Mambo was managed. "We all agreed that Mambo should embrace a larger audience which included commerce. For Mambo to be taken seriously in the commercial world (and this goes for all open source software), I believe it needs three things in addition to being a good product: demonstrable management; training and certification; and support. These were the things Miro could help with."

Although unrelated to the restructuring of Mambo's management, Miro had plans to develop training materials to use in courses and certification programs for clients. Since the Mambo core developers seemed privately incensed over Miro's advertising money, were they also upset that Miro would be charging for Mambo training and certification? If so, were they upset enough to fork the project and start their own Miro-like business to provide training and certification? Several members of the Joomla core team comprise an LLC called JamboWorks. Mitch Pirtle, who is involved with both JamboWorks and Open Source Matters (OSM), a non-profit that protects Joomla, told me in an interview that there was no affiliation between JamboWorks and OSM. There is, however, the following statement on the front page of the JamboWorks Web site: "Joomla! is a project built on hundreds of thousands of hours given up for free for the benefit of others. Because of this, JamboWorks is commited [sic] to supporting the Joomla! project." How committed are they? The JamboWorks Web site says that a training program for Joomla will be launched in January 2005, and other services -- like custom template creation and migration from other CMSes -- are also offered or announced.

Regarding Mambo-related revenue, Peter Lamont told me: "Advertising was the fastest way to generate income to hire the staff and servers we needed to get all the sites running the way we all wanted. The training and certification was a really early idea that never got off the ground and I didn't have any ideas about revenue at any point, nor was it ever brought up."

Starting in December of 2004, a Mambo Steering Committee was established with representatives from both Miro and the Mambo development team. This committee was designed to govern the Mambo project. At the request of the developers, Miro went forward with planning and implementing a non-profit Mambo Foundation some months later, using the Eclipse and GNOME Foundations as organizational models. This is where the trouble begins. According to Peter Lamont, the Mambo Steering Committee representatives that were selected to participate in the formation of the foundation suddenly demanded that the copyrights to the Mambo code be assigned to the Mambo Foundation.

The misunderstanding over this reassignment of copyrights was twofold: Lamont thought of this demand as the first step in a coup d'etat by rogue Mambo developers who wanted to hoard the software for their own commercial purposes. The developers thought that Miro was trying to retain control over the code so that it could dictate who could and could not offer official Mambo training and certification. Neither party appears to have fully understood that the code copyrights fell under the control and jurisdiction of the GNU General Public License, which prevents anyone from "taking" code away from the copyright holders, and corporations from restricting others from offering services. If the license already prevented what both parties feared from each other, was this simply a well-masked fight over money?

Upon learning of JamboWorks and the developers' seemingly nefarious plans, Lamont immediately modified the terms of the proposal to start the Mambo Foundation, fearing that the open source project that he had fostered for five years would be hijacked by rogue developers. The developers, in turn, saw this as a corporate hijacking of the software that they had worked hard on. Both the Mambo developers and Peter Lamont felt that they "owned" Mambo and, from different points of view, both were correct. Both parties felt that they were being cheated by the other side, communication -- if it had been at all open and honest up until that point -- broke down, assumptions were made, and flame wars started on various Mambo-related forums around the Internet. Egos and personalities on both sides of the disagreement prevented either from backing down. And finally, not long after the Mambo Foundation was solidified by Miro, the Mambo core team forked the project into Joomla.

According to Andrew Eddie and Mitch Pirtle, the chief problem with Miro's actions during this period was the limitation of Mambo developers on the Mambo Foundation board. Originally there were to be two Mambo representatives, two Miro representatives, and one uninvolved third party -- a lawyer who specializes in copyright law. Lamont had specific problems with Mambo developer Brian Teeman, whom he forbade from joining the Mambo Foundation board because of his allegedly undesirable behavior. Lamont didn't trust Eddie or Teeman, or their friends; he had seen evidence that suggested they were planning to wrest control of the project for their own commercial purposes. The position forcibly vacated by Teeman was offered to Robert Castley. Initially he agreed to the position, but backed out shortly thereafter. Two sources told me that it was pressure from people within the Mambo community -- possibly members of the core team -- that drove Castley off the board. The resultant imbalance of power on the Mambo Foundation board was among the last events that took place before Mambo was forked.

The electronic soap opera

Both Peter Lamont and the developers who later defected to Open Source Matters had one thing in common: they spent much time on Mambo forums discussing matters which were best left to private discussion. In speaking with the Joomla developers, I heard much about what was said, censored, or deleted from online forums, and little about what happened offline "in real life." At one point Mitch Pirtle offered me this post as an example of continuing hostility from the Mambo camp toward the Joomla developers. He later admitted that it wasn't as hostile as he thought, but still insisted that the use of the word "resumed" in this announcement was antagonistic.

Pirtle also said that he was upset at Lamont's post to the Mambo message forum about the establishment of the Mambo Foundation. Allegedly the post was made public before any of the Mambo core team members were notified privately. Peter Lamont disagrees with Mitch Pirtle's memory: "I was extremely careful to do the right thing and email people directly first to mitigate any unnecessary unrest. I didn't make any such post on the forum and I certainly would never have done it in advance. That's not my style."

Everyone involved seemed to want to make a public statement that would sway the community and get them to attack the opposing party, eventually losing sight of what was at stake and concentrating more on having the last word in the message forum than resolving the dispute. Andrew Eddie told me that he was reluctant to comment on the circumstances leading up to the fork because there was so much pain involved, and in an interview, associated the situation with a messy divorce. For a moment, it's easy to forget that he's talking about software. Did Eddie and his Joomla colleagues foolishly stake their emotional well-being on the politics surrounding a software program, or did something else go on behind the scenes that would more reasonably justify such an emotional reaction? Anonymous sources told me of quiet threats made to third-party Mambo developers, demanding that they switch their development efforts to Joomla. These people were too scared to go on record for this article, afraid of retaliation from their aggressors, and afraid that their Mambo-based businesses would be ruined. Were these anonymous people telling the truth, or just adding fuel to the fire? If they aren't lying, who threatened them? We outsiders may never know; the Open Source Matters people I contacted who participated in the Mambo/Joomla debacle staunchly refuse to discuss any of these matters, claiming that they have been advised by legal counsel to remain close-mouthed. What do they hide that the people who use their software are forbidden to know?

Rumors

To counter much of the misinformation around the Internet, I conducted interviews with several members of the Joomla project; the Mambo Foundation; and Miro International. Despite what you may have read elsewhere, the following rumors are false:

• Mambo changed its name to Joomla. Although this fallacy was initially reported, the Mambo project did not change its name. The old core team forked the project into Joomla, but Mambo remains intact with a new core development team. The Mambo trademark belongs to the Mambo Foundation.
• Miro did not honor Peter Lamont's promise to assign the Mambo copyrights and trademarks to the Mambo Foundation. The Mambo trademark and copyrights belong to the Mambo Foundation as of December 21, 2005. According to the parties involved in the transfer, it took a great deal of time and monetary expense for the paperwork to be approved.
• Miro tried to make third-party Mambo developers pay a fee to continue developing modules and components for Mambo. According to Peter Lamont, there were never any such plans discussed or implemented. There was, however, a level of membership available in the Mambo Foundation to third-party developers who wanted to have a say in the direction of the Mambo project. Similar membership options are available in the Eclipse Foundation, which was the inspiration for the Mambo Foundation. Foundation membership is not required to develop Mambo or Mambo-related software.
• All of the third-party developers have abandoned Mambo. A few who have close ties to the Joomla project have given up developing for the Mambo platform. Fortunately for Mambo users, the open source projects that have been committed entirely to Joomla have been forked and adopted by developers in the Mambo community. The only major component that has been switched to Joomla is the Two Shoes Module Factory's SimpleBoard forum software. Mambo developers have forked the project and now develop it as MamboBoard. The following projects have also been either adopted by Mambo developers or will soon be superseded by core modules: mosCE, Zoom, AKOComment, and MambelFish.
• Mambo doesn't have any developers left. While the former Mambo core team did defect en masse to Joomla, they were quickly replaced. The new Mambo core developers are already familiar with the code and working on -- in the words of lead developer Martin Brampton -- radically improving it. "We are reviewing and planning from the ground up, but aiming to avoid any nasty shocks for our community," Brampton said in an email.
• Miro controls the Mambo Foundation. The Mambo Foundation board has five positions. Two are filled by Miro International, and two are filled by representatives from the Mambo Steering Committee. The Mambo Foundation is a non-profit organization run exclusively by its membership. All board seats -- including the ones held by Miro employees or officers -- will be up for election by the membership in June of 2006. It is indeed possible for all Miro-related people to be voted off of the board at that time, if that is the wish of the foundation membership. Secondly, Miro has turned over control of the Mambo-Foundation and MamboLove Web sites to the Mambo Foundation. Thirdly, Mambo Steering Committee members receive all email concerning the operations of the foundation, and control the day-to-day operations and the project roadmap. Neither the Mambo Steering Committee nor any of the new Mambo core developers have any affiliations with Miro.

Mambo and Joomla now

As of this writing, Mambo 4.5.3 and Joomla 1.05 are reportedly compatible in terms of database structure, templates, modules, components, and mambots, although various minor problems are starting to pop up here and there, if requests for help on discussion forums are any indication.

This period of interoperability may end up being brief. According to Mitch Pirtle, the two projects are headed for a major divergence. Drastic modifications will be made to Joomla to accommodate better internationalization support, and a new content structure is planned which will completely discard the section/category organization traditionally employed by Mambo. These changes, when implemented, are certain to break compatibility with most or all Mambo-designed modules, components, and mambots.

Martin Brampton agreed that interoperability would eventually fade away, but that the Mambo developers would not accelerate that process intentionally. "We think that in many cases, where there are desirable changes [to the code], they can be made with minimum disruption to interfaces. Where interfaces have to be changed, we are not dogmatic about specific choices, provided they reflect sound design principles," he said.

The following table gives a quick, superficial comparison between the two projects on a few key points:

Andrew Eddie and Mitch Pirtle gave me some information about the next major version of Joomla:

• Structural changes to the APIs that employ better object-oriented programming principles, and will allow for better PHP5 support in a future version.
• Better internationalization support through the implementation of UTF-8 and separate language modules.
• Expanded database support (Oracle and PostgreSQL) and cross-database functionality.
• An FTP installation mode.
• Improved caching.

The Mambo core team also offered some information about the future of their project. The following reflects the major points that have been decided on as of this writing, but is by no means an exhaustive list of improvements and new features:

• Longer release cycles, with changes being applied via more frequent patches. This is by user request, to keep releases viable for longer periods of time while making security updates and bug fixes easier to implement.
• A code overhaul which will improve speed and resource efficiency. Hooks for mambots will be added, and object-oriented interfaces will be provided and documented for third-party developers. Use of global variables will be eliminated.
• Internationalization support for the client, admin, and content sides.
• Support for PostgreSQL and major commercial databases. The new features of PHP5 and MySQL5 will be fully exploited in the next major version of Mambo.
• Separation of core components, making way for third-party developers to offer commercial replacements for things such as banners, contacts, and content.

Looking at the major overhauls that both core teams plan to make, it's reasonable to assume that a Mambo fork may have been necessary for technological reasons, above and beyond any political problems.

Conclusions

It was neither the developers nor the traditional caretakers of the Mambo project that suffered most from the public spat that caused Mambo to fork; it was the users, who remain confused as to what to do with their Mambo installations and future sites that need content management systems. We may never know everything that happened, even if some of the details may reveal problems with the future of either project.

If you're using Mambo currently, do you need to switch to Joomla? The answer is no, as far as my research for this article shows. Having tried to switch two sites from Mambo to Joomla, I can personally attest to the fact that there very well could be difficulties in the transition, especially as they relate to the register_globals PHP setting. A small number modules will have to change; the only one I found for certain was SimpleBoard, which has to be switched over to JoomlaBoard or MamboBoard to stay with current development.

Both Mambo and Joomla have the same major goals in mind, but will end up taking different paths to get there. Only time will tell if Mambo's fork will outshine it -- or if it will even succeed after its initial momentum is exhausted. As for Mambo itself, I was shown evidence in the form of download numbers and Web site traffic statistics that indicate that Mambo has not only been unharmed by Joomla, but has actually become more popular since the fork occurred. The post-Joomla success makes one wonder what Mambo really lost -- if anything -- from the core team exodus.

Copyright 2005 Jem Matzan.