Unavoidable Fork Happened. How and Why ?
May 11th, 2008 | by Ozgur Cem Sen |In the last month I had a few blog post about the “possible outcomes of Open Source projects in turmoil”. Indeed, all those messages were referring to Mambo CMS project, and the very Mambo Foundation. After refraining myself from all the Mambo Foundation duties (Core Team Lead, Translation etc.) in April 2008, I wasn’t planning to get my hands dirty with the core Mambo code for a while, but instead we (Chad and I) tried to revive the project externally by adding cool features like REST interface, Bridget the RESTful Yahoo Widget and such. Unfortunately, those didn’t fly well with the existing Mambo structure.
Seeing all our recent efforts go down in flames was one thing, and seeing a collective effort exceeding 10 years Mambo experience is another. The latter hurts more. So happened MiaCMS fork on May 11th, 2008.
Mambo’s most recent release 4.6.3 was on December 25th, 2007, and a few important bugs were immediately reported a few days after the release. Mambo Team fixed those in a short time, and Mambo 4.6.4 had been “release ready” since January 2008. And the Mambo wheels spun and spun and spun. The code has been in a stand still since than. Don’t ask me, I still don’t get it; and I was a part of that team. I am sad to admit, I was not able to make a difference with in Mambo Foundation. Too many battles to fight to make the product better. Unfortunately, I personally don’t have the time and patience for it. Plus, what’s the point?
Some insider information on how the fork happened. After Chad and I split from the Mambo Foundation, we’ve been going back and forth with the idea of the “fork“. Everytime one of us brought it up – after getting fired up on something happened in the Foundation- the other one shotting it down. The main reason for being indecisive about the fork was that; it is a pretty big thing to bite. During one of those discussions at the end of April, somehow we got on the same page, titled “let’s fork this thing”. Convenient timing indeed; Al Warren resigns from his new Mambo Core Team Lead position and Richard Peter Ong hops on our fork train. Rest is yet to be history.
April 29, 2008, we grab a snapshot of Mambo 4.6 from Mambo SVN (rev. 1688), roll our sleeves and start coding inside out. In 10 days, we have 200 commits in our SVN:fixed numerous issues, bundled the REST API, added a Sitemap Component and a Social Bookmarking module, revamp the entire Administration console based on Y! UI, (yes it validates almost in all Admin pages), added a new validating template based on Y! UI Grids, a brand new WYSIWYG Editor, probably many more that I don’t remember now. All those needed to be done for ages, too bad we just couldn’t do it with Mambo. At some point, we were so fired up on the outstanding silly validation issues, we even fixed the Installer.
Here we are on May 11, 2008, and I am a proud participant of the MiaCMS project. I already upgraded all my personal sites to Mia, and didn’t bi^%@#!ch about any problems back to the developers (I personally know the dudes who worked on it). Anyways, I love it. And I hope, Mia will grow into a big project with a loving and caring community.
You can find more information about MiaCMS at http://miacms.org (you’ll see the documentation, screenshots, forum links over there
*Chad also has his musings on http://OpenSourcePenguin.net
6 Responses to “Unavoidable Fork Happened. How and Why ?”
By Al Warren on May 12, 2008 | Reply
I am so pleased and excited to be involved with this. It’s too bad the Mambo Foundation had to screw things up so bad. But I’m proud we took a stand and continue to protect the code.
On a sad but political note, Lynne Pope (aka Elpie) made some rather hostile remarks about us former developers in a post about team restructuring. I posted a rebuttal but it lasted all but five minutes before it was yanked. In fact, my session *mysteriously* expired before I could even save my reply on the first attempt. But being paranoid as I am, I saved the content before hitting ‘save’ and was able to post on a second attempt.
Since my rebuttal is not likely to ever see the light of day over at the old camp, I’m posting a copy here for historic and archival purposes. Let’s not make it an issue though. Let’s just move code forward and continue to preserve and protect it in a fantastic new product – Mia CMS.
Here’s my rebuttal to Lynne Pope’s spin on team restructuring:
“What absolute rubbish. My leaving the project had nothing to do with the “renaming” of the core development team. It had everything to do with you and the rest of the board making it very clear that you all had decided that the Mambo Foundation was on it’s last leg. In fact, as you all also made it very clear that you did not intend to seek re-election and that no one else was qualified to replace you then the project would effectively die.”
“The board of directors was at that point prepared to resign en-masse by the end of the weekend. In your words, there was not one who wanted to continue in their role as board member. That being the case, if the board resigned then the project could not continue for legal reasons.”
“Next, if there was a move to commercialize Mambo, then I was not aware of it. In fact, it was you, Elpie, who actually recommended the move to a BSD license. It had nothing to do with “commercialization” of Mambo as far as I know.”
“And finally, the policies, processes, and priorities of the Mambo Foundation were having a negative impact on the code and the community. Innovation, creativity, and team spirit were all but been eliminated. I could not continue to work under those conditions. I can’t speak for either of the other three who left the project. But I can say your *spin* on why any of us may have left is totally inaccurate and without merit.”
Posted by Al Warren, former Mambo core developer and team leader.
By Ozgur Cem Sen on May 12, 2008 | Reply
excerpt from
“http://forum.mambo-foundation.org/showthread.php?p=61448″
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A few months ago, Mambo experienced “deja vu” with the core development team requesting a change of the Mambo license to the modified BSD license. The Board of the Mambo Foundation agreed to this in principle. A resolution was passed to take this to the community for discussion and to call a Special General Meeting of the Foundation membership. This meeting would then vote on whether Mambo 5.0 should be released under the modified BSD license, or should be licensed under the GNU/GPL. While there was unanimous support amongst the core development team for the proposed license change, there was division over the position taken by the Foundation. Amidst claims the Foundation was holding the project back, Ozgur Cem Sen left.
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More discussions here
“http://forum.mambo-foundation.org/showthread.php?t=11617″
Unbelievable. Sad and funny at the same time.
I already posted on the Mambo Forum: My resignation from Mambo Foundation has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with any license discussions. I can’t care less about Mambo’s license.
Untruthful accusations, lots of word twisting….. I am so glad to be out of such an organization, and give the code a NEW life under the Mia name.
By John Coonen on Jul 16, 2008 | Reply
What a lot of people don’t realize when they’re on the “outside” is that INNOVATION, by its very nature, is a conflict-ridden, sometimes violent process.
In order for Mother Earth to form, molten lava needs to spew out of her innards; for the forests to grow, they must, at some point in time, burn to the ground.
It’s nature, folks. Progress has a price though.
It follows that when creating something bigger than ourselves – and particularly in the Open Source World where innovation cycles run at “ludicrous speed,” there needs to be a parting of ways in order for ideas to move forward.
MiaCMS is now making progress on its own;
Mambo is free to do as it pleases.
That doesn’t mean the lava, or fresh earth doesn’t still scorch your tootsies when you walk on it, but that’s the price we ALL pay for being in the sandbox.
Good luck patching things up; equally important, best-best-BEST of wishes for Mia and Mambo to set a course and GO GROW.
“Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?”
- Ben Franklin
By Jane B. on Aug 10, 2008 | Reply
Good job guys. Congrats. I noticed that MiaCMS wording is censored on the Mambo Foundation Forums. Is that a personal? What’s going on? Joomla is not a blocked word, but Mia is…
You should’ve terribly hurt someone there.
You openly stated that you have no hard feelings against the other CMSs, but this hostility !!!
Keep up the good job, and don’t look back. You’re on the right track.
jane
By James on Sep 3, 2008 | Reply
And where were you when the first people forked Mambo to form Joomla? You were sticking with the whole Mambo thing at that time, and now you see that perhaps the ones who left first were right, why don’t you even mention Joomla anywhere in your article? Is it a personal issue with the other developers? I don’t see the point is another fork of Mambo just like I wasn’t seeing the point of Mambo itself as soon as Joomla was created! In fact I don’t use Joomla, I’m all about Drupal which is to me clearly the best PHP CMS, but that’s another story. I was comparing features between Drupal and Joomla recently, but totally forgot about Mambo which for me was dead because of their “fondation bullshit” which was a layer of useless things, honestly, useless for the progress of an open source project.
So, why do you totally skip the existence of Joomla?
Cheers,
James
By Ozgur Cem Sen on Sep 3, 2008 | Reply
Hi James,
I was personally never involved with the J! fork. And I absolutely have no problems with any fellow J! developers. I greatly respect their efforts and success.
The reason J! was not mentioned is that, when we forked Mambo, it had nothing to do with J!. We forked Mambo 4.6.x, not J!. Therefore J! was irrelevant to the article.
About Drupal, agree with you that it’s a solid project.
As the foundation b/s goes, I’ve been there, done that
Cem