Mambo News

Mambo Knocks Out Firefox in the Open Source Shootout!

The development team of Mambo is celebrating what amounts to it's most significant form of recognition by the Open Source software community, after last night winning the "Best Open Source Solution" prize.

The Mambo content management system defied the bookmakers by defeating Firefox, IBM and LTSP, when being judged for the best of the best at San Francisco LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, at the Moscone Center.

"Many observers are starting to take Mambo seriously as a business solution, let-alone a user solution," Mambo lead developer Andrew Eddie said. "The fact that Mambo can stand toe-to-toe with the big boys is not so much recognition we seek but it does highlight the maturity of Mambo in today's technology space."

Mambo had been competing against the highly acclaimed Mozilla Foundation's Firefox web browser, Linux Terminal Server Project and IBM's Derby project. "Being in such good company also tells us Open Source software is really beginning to penetrate the marketplace," Mr Eddie said. "Mambo itself has had more than 3 million downloads and this number seems to be increasing exponentially over the past 12 months."

"It's reasonable to argue Firefox could become the web browser of choice and, I believe, Mambo has the potential to enjoy the same popularity with users, developers and business people trying out click-and-publish websites," he said.

Core developers Mitch Pirtle and Andy Miller were at the convention to accept the award. "There's been such a buzz around the project at the expo," Mr Pirtle said. "We've had so many people visit our stand to check out Mambo, we've been run off our feet."

He said many who visited the Mambo stand were hailing its ability to empower the end user to publish their content "without needing to be a rocket scientist". "The fact it removes barriers to people who would never have considered being able to quickly and easily publish on the web, is the most appealing feature to those who use Mambo."

"Developers and web designers too are attracted to Mambo as it provides an extremely powerful platform to create their clients' presence with less effort than using traditional bespoke code," he said.

Mambo's collection of awards over the past 12 months includes: "Best of Show", multiple "Best Open Source Solution" at LinuxWorld expos and was voted "Best Free Software Project of the Year" in the UK's LinuxFormat magazine.

Andy Miller said he believes Mambo was fast achieving global recognition with users and now with peers. "As an Open Source project, we never forget that it has been the users who have driven much of the refinement of what Mambo has become," Mr Miller said. "I like to call it software development ‘by democracy' as the Mambo team of developers is constantly listening to the feedback of the community. The developers are always seeking to improve Mambo based on collaborative effort." "There's always something we haven't considered that's brought to our attention by a fresh pair of eyes," Mr Miller added.