Mambo News

Mambo Foundation releases new Trademark License and Usage Policy

The Mambo Foundation, Inc, the governing body for the Mambo open source content management system project, has today released new usage guidelines for their Mambo trademarks.

"In the past year, we have seen increasing confusion amongst users of the Mambo CMS", says Ric Shreves, President of the Mambo Foundation Board. He says the changes that came about following a well-publicised fork and the later severing of ties with Mambo's former corporate sponsor have resulted in confusion about the status of the Mambo project.

"There are some Mambo fan sites around that are using Mambo trademarks and logos in contravention of our Trade Mark Licence and Usage Guidelines and this inadvertantly misleads users into thinking they are on an official Mambo website or forum", Ric Shreves adds, "Ultimately, this harms the project as users are not always getting the support they need while developers are not always getting the level of feedback that is required."

The Mambo project team got together with the Foundation to review the Trade Mark Licence and Usage Guidelines with the intention of clarifying how other sites can use the Mambo logos and trademarks. They view the marks as an important part of promoting Mambo and do not wish to discourage appropriate use, but recognise the importance of protecting the Mambo name.

Mambo is a thriving project with a strong team of programmers behind it. In the past four years it has weathered a few storms, but it has remained true to its philosohpy of providing a quality content management system that is flexible, extensible, and easy to use. The team is currently forging ahead with its goal of making Mambo an accessible CMS that meets WCAG standards.

"We need users to know where to find the project," core development team leader, Chad Auld says, "Like any open source project, the community is the driving force behind it. Posting contributions on other forums, bulletin boards and websites does not contribute to the project and conversely, when people think they are on a Mambo forum but don't get the support they need, Mambo gets the blame."

Existing users of the Mambo trademarks are encouraged to review the policy in full online at Mambo Foundation, Inc Trademark License and contact the Mambo Foundation if there are any questions. The policy is not about restricting appropriate use, but is about ensuring that confusion is minimised and that the official Mambo project is recognised. With over 5 million downloads of Mambo, it is in everyone's best interests that users are not misled about where to get the code or support for their open source software.