Mambo Foundation discussion

[seal_ho]

Open Letter to the Mambo Community

As you know, there have been several important and exciting changes in the Mambo community lately. The formation of the Mambo Foundation, a non-profit organisation whose mission is to manage the Mambo project, will ensure the security, longevity and success of Mambo and its community of users. Our next goal is to put together a strong organizational structure and encourage coordination between teams including core development, maintenance, documentation, translation, third-party development, membership, finance, administration and advocacy who will work under the Foundation umbrella.

The Mambo project has been extremely fortunate in having such a vital community that has advocated Mambo in many ways and helped it grow into the award-winning product it is today. We want to thank you for your continued support, which will continue to be critical moving forward.

Please visit www.mamboserver.com for additional information as things progress. We will be launching the Mambo Foundation website soon, where you will find general information about the Foundation, how to join as a member, FAQ’s, and much more.


Sincerely,
Peter Lamont
Chairman, Board of Regents
Mambo Foundation, Inc.

Please post your comments here.

[Regenerate]

Indeed very exciting news and another congratulations from the Dutch community. Keep the Mambo rock going!

Hmmm....

I'm curious to know what it means to the actual project though. Looks like Miro is getting more involved. Is this good? Is this bad?

What impact will it have on us, the users? When do we see that impact, positive or negative?

Why wasn't this announcement made by Andrew, or Brad, or Stingrey, who have made 99% of the announcements in the past?

Just would like to know.

[YTW]

I support the fact that the dev team may receive revenues for its investment in making Mambo the nº1 Open Source solution (would it be the case ? This would be the only way to guaranty the same level of excellence over a large period of time + regular and fast releases roll out), but I would like to know what will be the funding model of the Mambo foundation: Are we going for paid memberships or will Miro be funding 100% the Mambo foundation cash requirements ?¿

How does this fit in the so-called global strategy of certification, which by the way we have seen "NADA" (= nothing) until now ?

Wait & See I imagine...

[markusgs]

dear Peter (i hope i can call you by your first name - you seem to be pretty fond of the chairman title)

there are many issues that should be discussed...ill pick just two which certainly are important: the lack of democratic legitimisation and the degree of institutionalisation of OS communities. i hope that - from the thousands and thousands of mambo users - a handful will think and actually contribute with their - critical - (on my statements and the ones of mr chairman) opinions.

democratic legitimacy:

looks like the statutes are going to be much like a click&wrap agreement. given the fact that it is pretty much the comMUNITY (and not company) which makes up Mambo...would indeed be nice to have some kind of say in the drafting of the statutes. im not talking about users who just download and dont provide assistance and dont invest their time and knowledge into the community (/"company" ). im talking here about people from the translation teams, documentation teams, "ordinary" forum posters with hundreds of postings....all of them should at least be invited to have a discussion because they make the Mambo community to this what it is today - one of the most successful open source projects there is. what exactly is the legitimisation of mr chairman to draft statutes without having some kind of dialogue with the thing that is being "governed"?

degree of institutionalisation:

ohh...yeah...lets incoporate and make a foundation. seems to be a big hype those days. but whats wrong with having people deal with people - as opposed to via a foundation?!?

apart from the rather vague

Our next goal is to put together a strong organizational structure and encourage coordination between teams including core development, maintenance, documentation, translation, third-party development, membership, finance, administration and advocacy who will work under the Foundation umbrella

...what are the precise benefits of incorporating this whole thing? how precisely does it serve the interests of the community?

mambo is already the most successful OS community outthere and it has achieved all of that without being incorporated. reasons are certainly very capable core developers and co-ordination mechanisms that put mambo in the first spot. why change a winning team?!? how would an incorporation make mambo more successful?!? certainly, there has to be some kind of co-ordination...but thats what we have today. and there is plenty of evidence that it certainly does work. why should there be a "strong organisational" structure?!? what are the benefits of that? please explain. in fact, the "shootout" with firefox does not seem to suggest that a foundation is indeed something that gets you in the first place. having or not having a foundation does have an impact...just look at some of the (proprietary) policies that the mozilla foundation pursues...there is a very serious democratic shortcoming in most of those foundations.

the internet allows for a very efficient co-ordination of economic and non-economic resources. IMHO, for many aspects, in the internet age, putting an institutional umbrella over this whole thing is not necessary. certainly, especially in relation to outsiders (other companies for instance) a foundation is helpful and there are benefits in having some kind of structure - but as always, the devil is in the details of the charter. in this respect, some people (with an academic background) are working on a charter/constitution for such communities. the goal is to have some kind of democratic governance scheme (e.g. via performance polls) which ensures that the management/board of the foundation is indeed acting in the interests of the community (and not of the company). if community members are interested in particpating and coming up with brilliant ideas for the making up such a charter...any user/developer input is indeed very welcome.

regarding the good point of YTW, it would be much better if the community itself is providing the capital for the setting up and continuation of mambo. given the size of mambo, this would account to (annual) costs for the individual of perhaps 1 euro annually (on an assumed membership of 80 000). in contributing this - rather small amount annually - the mambo community would be completely independent and would not have to agree to click&wrap statutes but can actively participate in the drafting of this thing. in this respect, we are also working on mechanisms which would allow those funds to go directly to people (e.g. developers, team leaders). in fact, people would be allowed to have a say how their money is being spend. so, from a purely cost-benefit analysis...Mambers are much better off if the community funds itself.

just my 1 vode.

Originally Posted by markusgs

are much better off if the community funds itself.

I'd have to vote for self-direction as well as self-funding...

[SimbaPrince]

I have found what I had find when I become a Mambo user, because I am a software developer, I want to become a Mambo developer

[jbegley]

Everyone has posted some great questions here, some that we currently can answer, and some that will be answered as the Foundation continues to develop its structure, which will be pretty rapidly.

The reason the post was made by the Foundation, and by Peter Lamont, as chairman, was because it was announcing its incorporation, something the Mambo core team has been considering for some time. The reason the announcement did not come from the core development team is that the Foundation board has a different makeup than the development team. Some of the board members come from Miro, some come from the Mambo project, and others, like me, come from the software industry. Each member of the board was selected based on what they can bring to the project.

On the topic of community involvement, the Foundation is based on community involvement and empowerment. Our goal is to bring the community deeper into the process of steering Mambo to your needs. We also want to reward those members that contribute to the Mambo community with additional benefits. There is structure to all of this, but a democratic process requires this. More will be announced on this over the next few weeks.

The goal of all of this work is to continue to build the best Open Source content management system for its target audience, a goal that has not, and will not change. The developers will be able to focus on developing the project, the evangelists will be able to focus on promoting Mambo and the Foundation will work behind all of them to provide the growing infrastructure a project of this magnitude requires and deserves.

To back up the comments from Jim, the Foundation is a completely seperate entity to Miro. I repeat ... no ties with Miro.

Right, hopefully that is clear now.

Many [famous] open source projects have recently announced 'Foundations' so this is nothing new.

Some quotes for you to ponder over from those projects:


A primary goal of the Ubuntu Foundation is to ensure that a high quality distribution of free and open source software is available free of charge, throughout the world.

a. provide a foundation for open, collaborative software development projects by supplying hardware, communication, and business infrastructure;

To establish services for active users and developers of Blender

We value freedom, openness, and good technical design. All of our work occurs in public forums among an open community of technical experts, led by the Jabber Council. The output of our work is openly available and freely usable without restriction. And we strive to ensure that it always meets the highest standards of technical excellence.

In addition, the Foundation will be the legal owner of the Plone code, trademarks, and domain names. Our goal is to ensure that Plone remains the premier open source content management system and that we broaden its acceptance and visibility.

As you can see each and every project above has a common statement and that is to continue to provide the very best for 'free'. The creation of the Foundation will have little to no impact for the average Joe 'End' User other than continuing to provide them with the very best in CMS.

[hotjam]

As an end user, I think this sort of formation is great. I use Mambo as a solution in our own department in a large governmental institution and plan to offer it as a larger overall solution. Part of the solution incorporates other Mambo "3rd Party" solutions, so this just adds some more stability, credibility and professionalism to the project.

Mambo is popular, no doubt. But being popular just doesn’t cut it when you're trying to pass your ideas up against the higher powers that be.

It's hard enough just getting Firefox onto corporate standard desktops.

[idigital]

I think it would be fair to ask who exactly is involved in this foundation? Since the announcement there hasn't been a high level of transparency in this regard.

If the Foundation is a completely seperate entity to Miro, why did Miro make all of the announcements?

It seems Robert Castley is on the board of this foundation, I think the last almost anyone had heard Robert had left the Mambo project. Now he's a founding member of this new Foundation?

From the manner in which this announcement has been made, as vavroom pointed out such announcements are normally made by the core, it is unclear how much involvement the actual Mambo project team has had in the recent launch of this new Foundation.

It is evident that Miro has had a direct involvement however, saying that the Foundation is a seperate entity whilst the Chairman and quite probably some board members are Miro employees, this is somewhat confusing.

Finally, when this was announced, out of interest I checked if the Mambo Foundation website was active, and did a quick search on domain whois. I found that mambofoundation.org .com and .net were registered by a core team member.

So why is the domain that is now being used instead, mambo-foundation.org .com and .net, registered to Miro International?

[plamont]

Originally Posted by hotjam

As an end user, I think this sort of formation is great. I use Mambo as a solution in our own department in a large governmental institution and plan to offer it as a larger overall solution. Part of the solution incorporates other Mambo "3rd Party" solutions, so this just adds some more stability, credibility and professionalism to the project.

There are a lot of foundations 'corporatizing' and a lot of corporates launching foundations (Mozilla and Ubuntu for example). Each are trying to cater for the needs of the community and the needs of business. These two seem diametrically opposed at times but can actually work together to provide better products that are more fun to develop.

In answer to an earlier post, laws are meant to create freedom, who ever heard of an effective self-regulating body? The foundation simply puts a process in place and gives members a democratic right to have their say in accordance with the rules of association. Those rules and other documentation will be on the foundation site in due course. If you really want to have a say in the Mambo foundation, be a member and contribute.

In answer to an even earlier post; The foundation was an idea put to me by members of the dev team early this year. After long consideration I decided to choose my own board members from the community based on what I felt was a good mix of skill, management experience and a love of Mambo and to sever ties between Miro and Mambo by providing the foundation with their own unique license which allows them to continue to release Mambo as free software under the GPL.

And to idigital: In my opinion, Rob has more right to be on the foundation board than anyone here. It was Rob who we have to thank for the Mambo community as it it is today and while not I'm trying to take anything away from all the people who ever worked on Mambo, tell me who has worked harder or with more passion than Robert Castley? Personally, I think you all own him a debt of gratitude and should be thrilled he's back.

[idigital]

Originally Posted by plamont

In answer to an earlier post, laws are meant to create freedom, who ever heard of an effective self-regulating body? The foundation simply puts a process in place and gives members a democratic right to have their say in accordance with the rules of association. Those rules and other documentation will be on the foundation site in due course. If you really want to have a say in the Mambo foundation, be a member and contribute.

I would think that once a Foundation to govern a voluntary open source project had been put in place, due course would be now. With the sudden announcement of this Foundation directly following the winning of a major award by the Mambo project, with no transparency whatsoever, that we have seen little "democratic right" given to either the community or possibly even the hard working developers themselves.

Imagine a wide ranging voluntary organisation, with many many individuals contributing to a worthwhile cause, well you could call it a community even, suddenly being straddled with a new organisation that felt no need to even declare who exactly was on the board of directors.

We still don't even know what is involved in becoming a "member" of this Foundation to allow us to have a say in this democratic entity you have created, Peter. Do we have to give you our personal details, pay a membership fee, perhaps get accreditation first?

Originally Posted by plamont

In answer to an even earlier post; The foundation was an idea put to me by members of the dev team early this year. After long consideration I decided to choose my own board members from the community based on what I felt was a good mix of skill, management experience and a love of Mambo and to sever ties between Miro and Mambo by providing the foundation with their own unique license which allows them to continue to release Mambo as free software under the GPL.

So, the Foundation is not linked to Miro at all, except that you choose the board members and appointed yourself as Chairman?

It's hard to comment on your choices at this point as there has been no solid news on who exactly you did choose from "the community". Is it safe to say you decided not to choose anyone from the actual development team?

Also, please explain what you mean by "providing the foundation with their own unique license which allows them to continue to release Mambo as free software under the GPL.". Mambo is GPL, what could be unique about a license that allows Mambo to be continued to be released as GPL, unless there is some plan to do otherwise?

Transparency is needed at this point.

Originally Posted by plamont

And to idigital: In my opinion, Rob has more right to be on the foundation board than anyone here. It was Rob who we have to thank for the Mambo community as it it is today and while not I'm trying to take anything away from all the people who ever worked on Mambo, tell me who has worked harder or with more passion than Robert Castley? Personally, I think you all own him a debt of gratitude and should be thrilled he's back.

No-one is denying the right of "Rob" to be on the Foundation board. Saying that we have "Rob" to thank for the Mambo community is overlooking a major aspect of that statement, the *community*.

To say also that no-one has worked harder and with more passion than Robert Castley is also an odd statement. One that for obvious reasons I am not going to get into, Peter.

It can be said, however, that the long serving development *team* has done more for Mambo than any one person, and without support of the community there would be no foundation for your Foundation.

You only answered one of the questions in my last post, Peter, for the sake of reasonable discussion please attempt to answer something other than what you might see as a personal jibe against Robert.

So is this the silent certification route ? Do 3PD's and end-users end up paying dues to the Foundation to recieve recognition for the support they've done to encourage use of Mambo ?

Whilst it may be beneficial to have a Foundation for organisation and financial purposes, the fact Miro and the core team have been silent on the entire certification / 3PD issue for nearly a year now doesn't exactly help the 3PDs in the Mambo marketplace, let alone the end-users.

And merely because the Foundation now manages the core and dev teams doesn't stop those 'accredited' with the Foundation (as a possible long term plan) from providing bad service, which means Paul's comments about a centralised body are almost redundant. Anybody can provide bad service, even the most centralised, streamlined operation. People won't change their levels of customer service merely because they get a badge after their name..

Furthermore, the fact the policies for membership, etc.. have been (or are being) developed outside of the loop of the community at large, that means there is a significant risk of entropy within the Foundation itself, the various teams, and the community.

In some ways, the Foundation is no different to the announcement a while back that Miro was getting more involved in support for Mambo, at least from where I stand. It's just the level of control has stepped up a notch..

Originally Posted by www.pjdesign.net.au

It seems as if your issues are personal mate? Its about the future of mambo and teh community as a whole...not the future of you and your use of mambo to date.... Build a bridge as its all good.

Actually, I *don't* think that idigital's issues are personal. I have similar issues and they can't be personal since I don't personally know the players!

I have worked in the non-profit world for over a decade now, and quite frankly, if a foundation gets created with this apparent level of secrecy, I can't help thinking there's a problem.

As idigital says, we know a few of the board members, but we don't know them all. We know they were hand picked by Someone from Miro.

In my experience, board members are selected from/by the membership, if that is the kind of foundation we're talking about. And it would seem that it is, since Mr. Lamont has invited people to join as members (I think, though it's not clear).

I'm not saying that the idea of a foundation is bad per se, but the way this is being accomplished at this point leaves me highly sceptical of the whole thing.

"Board members include Peter Lamont <snip>, Robert Castley, <snip> Andrew Eddie, <snip> Jim Begley, and Justina Phoon" (from the press release). Who else is on it? Ok, we know Peter (Miro), Robert (don't know his current status), and Andrew (Mambo). Who's Jim? Justina's Miro.

On the surface there *is* involvement from the core team, on some level.

But... One thing strikes me. Why are we not hearing from the core development team members? They are shining by their absence in this debate, and I wonder if their silence speaks louder than words...

As an aside, I resent being told to panic because it's "bye bye quick buck", either in public or in private. I *don't* make a quick buck from my involvement with mambo, if I make a buck at all.

If I was in this for the money, I wouldn't have spent countless hours offering support to other members of the forums here.

[jbegley]

There are a lot of questions about the rules in place and some idea that they were formed in secrecy as a devious means. While I appreciate the concern, the challenge is that one cannot legally create a foundation without having rules in place prior to its registration.
As to the number of rules in place at the moment, the number is relatively few, specifically for the purpose of proposal and voting once key members of the community are in place. So, if there are questions that we have not answered with enough detail, it is because the rules in all areas are not set in place. We will get there, and we will do it with the community at large, that is the goal.

As to the who Jim is, I am a Mambo user who runs a small software startup and use Mambo for my company web site. I come from a long background in the commercial software industry, (15+ years), where my focus has been on improving the process used for building applications that meet customer's needs as well as managing the 3rd party developer programs for companies like FrontRange / GoldMine and Intuit. I met Peter by contacting him after first installing Mambo and being absolutely frustrated with installation issues and the compatibility issues of 3rd party plug-ins. (The plug-in issues were Mambo project coordination issues, not the fault of the 3PD). We struck up quite a few lengthy conversations on the growth and success of Mambo and I have been observing quietly in the background as I watch the Mambo team struggle with a lot of the exact same problems that my teams have faced over the last 10 years.

With that, some may wonder / worry why someone with a commercial background is working with the Mambo Foundation. Trust me, it has absolutely nothing to do with moving to a commercial model. It has everything to do with "been there / done that". The challenges that Mambo faces with its continual success are typical, strained communication, projects that don't get done, release coordination issues with 3PD. They can all be fixed, and the Foundation will provide the structure needed to do that. I have signed on to help where I can and where my experience is relevant.

Thanks for the opportunity to introduce myself.

[hotjam]

All I can say is, Genghis Kahn, Alexander, Napoleon, all had it pretty much going on. Then the party was over.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? Well there was no process in place to keep the place running. Once the big cheese was out of the picture. GAME OVER Dude.

When the whole Brian C hoo hah hah, happened and legal actions were being launched. I didn't see anyone say " Hey man, here's my check book, take what you need to fight the fight if you need it".

I saw a lot of "don't worry, he's got nothing on you". But still those legal actions still must come at some cost. You can only do so much pro bono work for lawyers, until they say.. uh you need to show me some real cash.

The only thing I saw was Miro was willing to stare it right into the face and said bring it on! And I didn't hear anyone say.. "That's crazy talk, You've got no purpose on being here!"

I'd like to see something in place that can stand and represent the community or individuals when need be, and not just when things go a bit ugly. (ok start waving the big Mambo flags now guys... cue up the music....)


I don't know maybe I'm just talking crazy talk my self.

Jim,

Thanks for telling us a bit more about you

Originally Posted by jbegley

the challenge is that one cannot legally create a foundation without having rules in place prior to its registration.

I don't dispute that. As I said, I've been involved in the non-profit world for a significant amount of time and have been instrumental in starting a few organisations/foundations myself.

In theory, I don't have a problem with a foundation, I can see many advantages if things are done and setup properly.

But that's the thing that is getting to me. It doesn't *feel* like it's being done right. It isn't transparent.

We were presented with a "fait accompli". We were told "Here's this new foundation, love it or leave it". It would, to me, have been much more palatable if there had been talk about forming this organisation before hand, so the "rules" in question as basic as they needed to be to start, could have been at least reviewed by people.

I realise that in such a big community as this one, you sometimes have to take a "tyranical" approach and implement things ad hoc rather than taking the so-called democratic process and consult ad nauseam. Yet, this seems momentous enough that some prior discussion would have been better.

And we have yet to really get a grip on what's going on. We have yet to hear from the core devs. We have yet to know anything of substance as to how the foundation is setup, membership, scope, etc. I just tried to go to mambo-foundation.org, and mambofoundation.org and got asked for a password!!! Yet that URL is in the press release. I'm sorry if I'm not filled with confidence by that.

Originally Posted by absalom

In some ways, the Foundation is no different to the announcement a while back that Miro was getting more involved in support for Mambo, at least from where I stand. It's just the level of control has stepped up a notch.

Taking on board the "reassurances" that Miro and the Foundation are quite separate, I still have to agree with absalom here, or at least until I'm shown otherwise in a demonstrated and convincing manner.

As vavroom has pointed out, we have yet to hear from the core devs. This act doesn't display confidence that the Foundation is a good way for people to go. (If the core devs are behind it, why the silence?)

Another thing that leapt of Paul's words (pjdesign) was that he believes now he will recieve better support when in fact Miro has been offering a commercial support model for Mambo for a while now. This does seem like a bit of hand waving, as I'm kind of left questioning - if the support was so bad before, why didn't Paul approach Miro prior to this ?

There were numerous promises and claims made by the core and dev teams previously on these forums that now don't like they're to be honoured as a Foundation based business model may go against those claims and promises. Advocacy for 3PDs, end users and people related to the Mambo open source project, as well as the transparency and accountability needed for this sort of thing (as correctly identified by idigital), need to be addressed.

If information was correctly and openly disseminated, people wouldn't fear change. Change at times is good, however, how you handle that change reflects your aims.

How about a little deja vu ?