Mambo News

Everybody Mambo!

Originally published in the Bangkok Post Database

Mambo's on a roll. After dancing away with two awards at the recent Linux World conference, in the process beating out industry titans like Sun, IBM, and Oracle for top honours as the Best of Show, the popular content management system was just named Best Free Software of 2004 by Linux Format magazine.

Coming on the heels of a tumultuous year that saw the development team survive the loss of its project director and a long and soul-numbing SCO-type assault, the recent accolades must be sweet music to Mambo's ears.

Mambo is a popular and successful web site publishing tool. The Mambo code set can be downloaded as a single file which you then uncompress and install on a server. Once installed it can be easily customised to create and manage a variety of web site formats, including powerful portal and community sites. The code is free and the modifications can be done from inside your browser without programming knowledge and without additional tools.

In a relatively short period of time, Mambo has become very popular with the web site developer community. The system's ease of use enables small development houses and design studios to build large and highly functional sites; jobs that used to require either very expensive tools, highly trained programmers, or both. According to the Mambo team, the Mambo installation package has been downloaded more than three million times and currently powers as many as one and a half million installations.

Mambo was originally created by Miro ( www.miro.com.au ), a small software development company located in Melbourne, Australia. Inspired by the strength and success of open source systems like phpNuke, Miro set out to develop its own content management system (CMS). In 2000, Miro released an open source version of the new CMS they called Mambo to the public for testing and to solicit feedback to refine the system.

The Mambo code set was released under the terms of an open source licence called GPL (General Public Licence). Miro CEO Peter Lamont stated that Miro “felt that the GPL was the most appropriate license that would allow collaboration and growth for Mambo.” The GPL allows developers to use the code freely and without restriction, provided only that any enhancements to the code also be released to open source.

The GPL is arguably the most ``open'' of all formal open source structures and has been one of the keys to the explosive growth of Mambo.

While Miro released one version of Mambo to the open source community, it kept another more advanced version of the code under its control and built it into a commercial product aimed at the corporate CMS market.

After a year in the wild, the open source Mambo code set had grown but had not taken on an identity of its own; it was still essentially identical to the privately-held code set. To help energise the open source efforts, Miro appointed a project director, Robert Castley. In classic open source fashion, Castley lived on the other side of the world, had a day job, and remained independent.

Under Castley's guidance, Mambo grew from a stepchild existing in the shadow of the Miro commercial product to a mature and independent product with a life of its own. Not only did the core code set evolve into a unique product, but third party developers also began to contribute a significant number of independent modules and components, expanding Mambo far beyond its original capabilities. Courtesy of the GPL scheme, the enhancements to Mambo became open source as well.

In the Spring of 2004, Mambo received its first major award. Linux User magazine named version 4.5 of Mambo Best Linux or Open Source Software of the Year.

While things looked bright for Mambo, trouble was lurking. In 2004, after a long series of private threats and discussion board sniping, someone put out a series of press releases alleging that the Mambo code set infringed on innovations developed by someone in his employ.

Some of the IT press grabbed the press release without bothering to investigate whether a legal proceeding had actually been initiated. Suddenly, the entire Mambo development project was put under the microscope.

After a great deal of acrimonious and very public rhetoric, Miro stepped in and threatened to take the claimant to court to force him to prove his claims. Shortly thereafter, the attacks and the threats ceased. No legal proceedings were ever initiated. It should have been a disturbance worthy of only a teacup, but the IT press had turned it into a tempest.

``The sad thing about all of this was that even though no formal accusations were ever made, nor any evidence provided, the whole incident disrupted many of our lives and cost Miro a considerable amount in legal fees,'' notes Mambo public relations liaison and counselor Brian Teeman.

Shortly after the incident, Robert Castley resigned from his role as project director, citing work and family pressures. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Miro began quietly to discuss whether the time was right to bring the open source Mambo back into the Miro fold.

The void created by Castley's departure was filled by Andrew Eddie, who manages to find time to run Mambo development in addition to his day job as a systems analyst for a municipal government in Australia. The development team includes 10 people focused on development and three on maintenance.

While some members fill specialised roles, like documentation or graphics, organisation is generally informal. Like Eddie, the team members are all employed full time elsewhere. They are volunteers who devote their extra hours to the growth of Mambo. Teeman describes the group as ``a meritocracy.''

Team members are scattered around the world. Communication is via email, chat rooms, and the odd phone call. The Team also maintains an IRC channel for their use. On the subject of the challenges this presents, Eddie sees a glass half full, “The time zone differences has advantages, it means that Mambo is effectively ‘awake' all the time.” He also notes that language differences present a hurdle, “We communicate in English, however on some issues translation can go adrift and we sometimes find after many hours of mails arguing back and forth that we had in fact been saying the same thing all along.”

In December of last year, Miro decided to formally take Mambo back under their wings. Mambo would remain Open Source, but would now be officially incubated and sheltered by Miro. Eddie describes the relationship: “Up to this time, Miro has merely played a back seat role, providing Mambo with valuable infrastructure and sometimes legal support. The legal debacle we faced earlier in the year emphasized that Mambo needed some strength behind it to be protected from frivolous harassment.”

Both Teeman and Eddie note that the increased pace of Mambo's growth has made apparent a need for increased stability and a need for access to greater resources. Notes Eddie, “It was becoming increasingly apparent that there was a demand and a need for developer certification, training and commercial levels of support. All of these require both finance and a stable infrastructure, something that the Development Team could not provide.”

Since the announcement, Miro has dedicated two staff persons to the Mambo effort and assigned another five to work on the system part time.  The company plans to double that number over the next few months – a significant commitment for a firm that presently has only 16 employees.

For Miro, the move makes solid commercial sense. “Miro has always been involved in Mambo in one way or another,” said Peter Lamont. “In one sense this change means more of the same. Continued financial and management support means a more stable project. One less likely to fall apart due to internal squabbles and one that is more robust.”

The business model that seems to be emerging follows a proven Open Source path, one similar to that adopted by BEA and others.  Miro is leaving Mambo in the Open Source community and deriving benefit from pushing out related commercial products and services, like certification and support. Lamont notes that this is a calculated risk, “Commercial businesses getting involved with Open Source is always a gamble. We have to invest a great deal of time and money to develop these things. In the long run I think that many businesses will realize the future is in providing that important infrastructure to Open Source communities.”

Andrew Eddie sees similar commercial potential for Miro and others, “The community includes an ever increasing sector of people that like to use Mambo but don't know how to maintain it on a server, let alone install it. It's this group that is willing to pay people to keep their Mambo sites running so they don't have the headaches associated with site administration. There are also those that might have Mambo available to many tens or hundreds of content providers in an intranet situation. The needs for training and support obviously balloon beyond the ability of most webmasters.”

The open question is whether, like BEA, Miro will avail itself of the other half of the Open Source business model, that is, learning from the Open Source community in order to improve their proprietary products. Will the Open Source Mambo nurture or devour its sibling, the commercial Mambo? Only time will tell.

Looking forward, Miro CEO Lamont is optimistic, “I expect Mambo to follow great Open Source projects like RedHat, MySQL, JBoss and others. One that has a rich developer and user environment with the resources to give it the necessary credibility to be used with confidence in the commercial world as well.”

In Thailand, Mambo is also making its mark. Users here have banded together to form the MamboHub and have translated the Mambo core and many of the components into Thai. Teeman visited the group in December as part of his Mambo community efforts. “The group has done an amazing job in Thailand spreading the word about Mambo. The training and support they offer has had a positive effect on both the uptake of Mambo and its development in Thailand.” The MamboHub offers training courses at local universities and provides Thai language support forums. 

Learn more about Mambo at http://www.mambo-foundation.org

Copyright 2005 Ric Shreves