Team Mambo has released the Public Beta for version 4.6, the newest version of the Award-winning Mambo Open Source Content Management System. The beta release is provided in advance of the final release to encourage community feedback and to help third party developers understand better the changes which are being implemented in the system.

Today, Peter Lamont, CEO of Miro, signed a legal deed granting to the Mambo Foundation the rights and interests in the Mambo name, logo, and associated trademarks. The grant of rights covers the following materials:

(a) all Miro’s right, title and interest in the Mambo Trade Marks and the Mambo Copyright Works;

(b) the full benefit of the Mambo Trade Marks and the Mambo Copyright Works subject to any licenses previously granted by Miro (e.g., the GNU / GPL);

(c) all its rights against any third party in respect of the Mambo Trade Marks and Mambo Copyright Works, including all rights of suit and action and to damages, including damages for infringements predating this document.

There has been a spate of attacks on Mambo sites in the last few days. These have been serious, in that they involved running arbitrary PHP code in the site attacked. This means that the security of information may have been compromised, and back door code may have been installed. Anyone who has been attacked should take great care to ensure that their site has been thoroughly restored to a safe condition. If advice is needed, please post in the Mambo forums.

Today, Team Mambo announced that the newest version of Mambo, version 4.5.3, will be released by the end of November this year.

4.5.3 represents the new Team’s first consolidation of bug fixes and includes a number of security enhancements. It also includes a feature which allows for toggling the administration interface between two views: Simple and Advanced, the idea being to provide a less complicated interface for basic users and a more powerful administration interface for experienced webmasters; in essence matching the right tool to the right users, rather than presenting everyone with the same interface regardless of their needs. 4.5.3 will also include a new set of templates to give users a wider range of choices for deploying attractive and functional sites quickly.

The Mambo Foundation is pleased to announce the re-formation of the Mambo Steering Committee (MSC) and the filling of the MSC’s seat on the Mambo Foundation Board of Directors. Team Mambo is back and stronger than ever!

By way of introduction: Mambo development is driven by the community, with community members being broken up into 7 teams. The 7 Teams are:

• Advocacy & PR
• Core Development
• Documentation
• Forum Moderators
• Maintenance
• Third Party Develepers
• Translation

The Mambo Foundation today announced changes to its Third Party Developer membership category. “The current Third Party Developer level was creating confusion and misconceptions in the community,” said Ric Shreves, Director of Advocacy and PR for the Mambo Foundation. “While the original intention of the ‘Third-Party Developer Member’ category was to provide members with additional benefits, such as co-partnerships with the Foundation on components and to provide deeper insight and communication with the Mambo core development team, it has proven instead to be a magnet for criticism from the community”

The Mambo Foundation, home of Mambo, the world’s leading Open Source Content Management System, announced that SpikeSource has created a fully-integrated, one-click installer for Mambo.

The Mambo Foundation has announced that Miro International, founder, copyright and trademark owner of Mambo Open Source, has begun the process of transferring the copyright and trademark of Mambo to the Mambo Foundation today. The agreement between Miro International and the Mambo Foundation is to transfer outright to the Mambo Foundation all of the intellectual property rights relating to Mambo.