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The Internet GNU is Not Unix Your Rights Online

Mambo Users Threatened 254

Posted by CowboyNeal from the biting-the-hand-that-feeds dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Newsforge has an article about a recent dispute over code in Mambo (a Free CMS). A Mr. Connolly has sent threatening emails to Mambo users over this, a move John Weathersby of OSSI was quoted as saying 'That's ... not prudent.' The dispute is over some trivial code that checks whether a story is a lead story and if so displays it across multiple columns, as it's a modification of GPL code the Mambo team maintain it must remain GPL but Mr. Connolly claims otherwise."
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Mambo Users Threatened More

Mambo Users Threatened

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  • Inaccurate summary (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:54AM (#10284930)
    The Newsforge report says that Mr. Connolly never redistributed the disputed code... therefore the disputed code is _not_ under the GPL. Under the GPL, you can do what you like with the code; you only have to GPL your modifications if you re-distribute.

    • Re:Inaccurate summary (Score:5, Informative)

      by enrico_suave ( 179651 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:43AM (#10285193) Homepage
      actually apparently he *did* redistribute it... at least according to the guy who did the contract work

      "I should mention that Connolly has distributed copies of Mambo under the GPL on his homepage (http://www.literatigroup.com/furthermore/, now removed, screenshot available) " -- Emir Sakic

      *shrug* I think Sakic summed it up nicely...

      To summarize it:
      1) The code delivered to Brian Connolly is not the same as the code implemented in Mambo.
      2) The code delivered to Brian Connolly was derived from GPL, Copyright Miro International Pty.
      3) Brian Connolly distributed copies of Mambo that had the so-called 'infringing' functionality under the GPL.
      4) There are no copyright assignments with my signature on.
      5) Brian Connolly has no trademarks or patents on anything resembling the disputed functionality.

    • Re:Inaccurate summary (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Man, this whole GPL thing is so confusing. I shouldn't need to retain a lawyer to use some software! I'm sticking with Microsoft. I pay my money, and I'm worry free.

  • "Mr Connolly alleges that a contract exists... (Score:5, Funny)

    by stankulp ( 69949 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:57AM (#10284947) Homepage
    ...between himself and the developer but despite numerous requests he has refused to produce it."

    He should just type one up in MS Word and use that.

    A fake document can be used as evidence.

    Just ask Dan Rather.

  • FUD (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mfh ( 56 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:57AM (#10284950) Homepage Journal
    If you are presently using the software application "Mambo OS" in any release post October 3, 2003, you and your organization are potentially exposed to CIVIL LITIGATION and possibly CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.

    FUD. More FUD. Even more FUD.

    What kind of idiot thinks FUD == Money? Hasn't SCO proven that FUD != Money? *sigh*

    • Re:FUD (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lukewarmfusion ( 726141 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:04AM (#10284989) Homepage Journal
      Security companies use FUD all the time to drive the point home. And many of them are extremely wealthy as a result.

      The different is that FUD - fear, uncertainty, doubt - can in fact be grounded in reality. If you don't install a firewall, anti-virus software, and apply patches, you're not likely to last. So when they spread FUD, they're actually just educating. When SCO or Microsoft spreads FUD, they're just marketing. Sure, educating potential customers and marketing to potential customers can overlap - but don't be confused that FUD is necessarily an evil thing.

      • Re:FUD (Score:4, Insightful)

        by moonbender ( 547943 ) <moonbender AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:23AM (#10285078)
        Quoting ESR's Jargon File [catb.org]:
        Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company: FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering [Amdahl] products. The idea, of course, was to persuade them to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. See IBM. After 1990 the term FUD was associated increasingly frequently with Microsoft, and has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon.
        I think the term FUD is almost exlusively used derogatory; ie. FUD can (per this somewhat authoritative definition) not be "grounded in reality", it's disinformation.

      • Re:FUD (Score:2, Redundant)

        by Rantastic ( 583764 )
        The different (sic) is that FUD - fear, uncertainty, doubt - can in fact be grounded in reality

        Actually, you are incorrect.

        The term FUD was coined by Gene Amdahl, who had left IBM to design and sell competing mainframes. He used the acronym FUD to describe IBMs marketing tactices. Namely that IBM salesmen (sorry ladies, they were all men at the time!) would use various missleading statements to leave a potention customer with Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about by products from companies other than IBM.

      • you are clearly misunderstanding what FUD is, you say:

        he different is that FUD - fear, uncertainty, doubt - can in fact be grounded in reality

        as the previous responses have indicated with their links to the definition, which I will repeat, FUD is a technical term [catb.org] for disinformation that is intended to inspire fear, uncertainty, and doubt. If it's grounded in reality, it is by definition not FUD. I hate these MOD PARENT X posts, but you just cannot get away with saying something that blatantly misinfor
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Mambo
    This site is temporarily unavailable.
    Please notify the System Administrator.

    Did their servers catch on fire from the subscribers?

    Anyone have a cache?

    • Statement regarding Furthermore.com

      As many of you are aware for the last few weeks a Mr Connolly of Furthemore.com and Literati Inc has made several threats and claims to the Mambo Community regarding alleged use of his code and his ideas in producing "the leading story functionality." in the frontpage of Mambo.
      We were initially very surprised at Mr Connolly's claim as they date back to an alleged breach of copyright that occurred 366 days ago.

      We have investigated these claims and believe that:-

      1. The d
    • You mean the google cache [216.239.59.104] or the coral cache [nyud.net]?
    • At the end of July, Mambo ran a little story on their website asking, Can your PHP/MySQL CMS handle a Slashdotting? [mamboserver.com] where they tested Mambo against:
      Post-Nuke
      Drupal
      Xoops
      e107
      Xaraya

      Mambo in the middle at close second place, MUCH better than Post-Nuke and Xaraya. Their main website hasn't been doing too bad handling the traffic as of this post, so I guess we'll see how it is by the end of the day.

  • Already toast. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by theparanoidcynic ( 705438 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:59AM (#10284956)
    When are we going to start putting the Coral link IN THE STORY around here?

    • Re:Already toast. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rincebrain ( 776480 )
      When Coral stops throwing up "*website*: too many files open" errors randomly.
    • As I understand it Coral only caches files over 5 meg, so a Coral link of an ordinary webpage would not help. It would just relay each Slashdotter through Coral and out to the original website anyway. The only effect is to waste Coral bandwith.

      -

  • For those who have no idea what this is about (Score:3, Informative)

    by io333 ( 574963 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @10:59AM (#10284959)
    CMS is "content management system." It is a program to make something like a "newspaper" type web page -- what you might see when you go to NYTimes.com.

    It took me a long time to figure that out, so I think I should get some upmodding here. Oh BTW, I have mod points myself right now, so if you are *bad*, I'm commin' after you ;)

  • Seems to be /.'ed now... (Score:4, Informative)

    by (H)elix1 ( 231155 ) <slashdot.helix@nOSPaM.gmail.com> on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:01AM (#10284972) Homepage Journal
    WARNING Issued to Users of Popular Software Application
    Wednesday, September 15, 2004

    CHICAGO, September 15, 2004 -- The following is an Open Letter from Furthermore, Inc. to the Open Source and Technology Community Regarding the Misappropriation of Intellectual Property:

    If you are presently using the software application "Mambo OS" in any release post October 3, 2003, you and your organization are potentially exposed to CIVIL LITIGATION and possibly CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.

    Our company, Furthermore, Inc., owns the code that enables the appearance and management of the "Lead Story Block" in Mambo. This code was taken without our permission by a lead member of the Mambo Development Team and put into Mambo's core program. Our copyright was then attributed to Miro International. Here we are reiterating our ownership of the Intellectual Property and issue a formal WARNING that we are preparing to file legal action against users of this application.

    Do know that we've tried to resolve this cooperatively. However, the leadership of the Mambo Project is intractable in their misunderstanding in fact and law. They wrongly contend that since the code was put into the "General Public License" pool, it too must be GPL. Also, they wrongly contend that as our trade secrets have been variously modified, they are immune.

    Bottom line: As express permission was never granted, their transfer of copyright ownership without express written authority is null and void. Also, the right to use any/all derivative works also was/is not granted as defined by law. Lastly, using a trade secret to gain unfair advantage is by definition against the law.

    Anticipating that problems like these would be greatly amplified by the Internet, the US Congress recently and significantly strengthened the power of the law. As a result, the consequences of an infringement have never been more stringent. In addition to the punitive monetary damages that are being awarded in related civil suits, the law now makes these types of activities a federal crime.

    In 1997, Congress passed the No Electronic Theft Act; and in 1996, it passed the Economic Espionage Act.

    The NET Act makes copyright infringement a crime. It's a misdemeanor if it is done for commercial advantage or private financial gain, or by making or distributing one or more copies of copyrighted works that have a total retail value in excess of $1,000 within a 180-day period. It's a felony if it involves a minimum of ten copies of copyrighted works with a retail value of more than $2,500 within a period of six months. To date, NET Act related cases primarily involve pirates accused of illegally copying and distributing copyrighted computer software over the Internet. Sentencing under the NET include substantial fines and imprisonment of 3 to 10 years.

    The EEA makes it a crime to steal (or misappropriate) trade secrets. The Act makes even the attempt or conspiracy to steal or misappropriate trade secrets a crime. The Act includes both direct and indirect theft of a trade secret, including its alteration or destruction. Individuals and organizations convicted of violating the EEA face severe penalties. Section 1832 of the Act covers theft of a trade secret "that is related to or included in a product," including both direct and indirect theft of a trade secret, including its alteration or destruction. A person convicted of violating Section 1832 faces a fine of up to $500,000 or a prison sentence of up to 10 years, or both, while any organization that commits any offense described in Section 1832 may be fined up to $5,000,000.

    Lastly, we deeply regret that we have no choice but to seek remedy from the users of Mambo. Mambo has explicitly informed us that "the Mambo project can offer no further assistance in this matter. Mambo can not be party to any disputes between individuals or companies concerning the use of Mambo." Plainly, it's you the user they've left holding the bag.

    Sincerely,

    Brian Connolly
    President
    Furthermore, Inc.

  • Why did he send threatening emails... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:02AM (#10284982)
    ...when he could have written a slanderous mambo?

  • Sounds like the moral of the story is.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:07AM (#10285002) Homepage
    Open source developers need to err on the side of rejecting submissions rather than risk accepting corrupted ones. From the sounds of it, Sakic took some of the work he was paid to do exclusively for Connelley and gave it away to the Mambo guys. If that be the case, and we wouldn't know until the shit really hits the fan, then it would be very cut and dry: Sakic was wrong and the Mambo guys should have known better.

    Granted the laws should be changed, because as they stand right now they only benefit lawyers. If company A believes company B has a legal right to sell a product to company A then it should be immune to litigation, and company B should be the one that gets hit. Company A should have the legal right to rewrite the code until it is no longer the infringing code. The time frame, and whether the old code would have to be stripped immediately would of course be set by law.

    Maybe the safest bet until that happens, if it ever happens, is for OSS projects to bite the bullet and do even more work "in house" than accept submissions rather than risk getting SCO'd.

    • How would they have known better? All they probably got is an email with a patch. How would they have known (a) that he was doing the work for hire and (b) that he was not supposed to distribute the code.

      But I don't see how it matters anyway. From the story it seems he is still distributing the software on his website, which means he must be distributing those changes under the GPL. It seems to me he can either stop distributing and continue the threats or must stop threatening.

      Very similar to SCO..

    • Or, the moral is, rewrite redistribute and give the ass suing you the bird.

    • From the sounds of it, Sakic took some of the work he was paid to do exclusively for Connelley and gave it away to the Mambo guys.

      The moral of the story is, read the whole article.

      Sakic claims there are two separate peices of code based on code already in Mambo. So not only did he not publish the work he did for Connolly, it was derived from GPL-ed code in the first place.

      If Connolly wanted to build a proprietary product based on open-source code, he should have started out with code under a less restrictive license like the BSD one.
      • That is the key point. My company uses a lot of open-source, as a point wether we distribute it or not, we release back any changes we make to packages we use (not many changes yet, though).

        This Connolly guy wants to make money off of worked derived from other people that was given to the community. Then he gets pissy because someone he hired to modify open-source code for his money-making scheme wrote similar code and gave it back to the community he based it off. Thats just sleazy.

        If you go to their
    • Sakic was wrong and the Mambo guys should have known better.

      Why? The developer *lied*. He claimed the work was his when it wasn't. If anyone here should be sued, it should be him, for breach of contract. Meanwhile, the Mambo guys should simply remove the code from their product, and release a new revision.

      do even more work "in house" than accept submissions rather than risk getting SCO'd.

      What does this even mean? "in house"... there's no such thing, in an open source project. The fact is, you c
      • The developer *lied*. He claimed the work was his when it wasn't.

        Do you have evidence of that? Sacik says he did a new implementation for Mambo. Connolly says he hasn't even looked at the code. If he didn't look at the code, then he doesn't know whether there's an infringement or not!
    • Sakic claims that the code implimented for Mambo was not derived from the Furthermore code, that these were independent implimentations, and that the Mambo code even had differing features.

      Secondly, IANAL, but I don't think an end user is really subject to litigation in this case. SCO vs. DCC was mostly thrown out and the court concurred that DCC was *not* required to certify that it was not either using Linux or contributing to it. Using software which has infringing code is probably not a crime to my k
      • An important point - despite SCOs public statements, they have not file any suits against end users "for running Linux". AutoZone is supposedly about the use of shared libraries, not the use of Linux per se. DCC was about DCCs requirement to certify. At NO TIME has SCO filed anything even approaching a copyright infringment suit against a linux user.

        I also do not think that the end user is liable in this case - certainly there's an obligation to stop using the work if it's proven to infringe, morally at le

  • FUD (Score:5, Funny)

    by mod_parent_down ( 692943 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:09AM (#10285010)
    The chief component of FUD is Fear... Fear and Doubt. Doubt and Fear. The TWO components of FUD are Fear and Doubt... And Uncertainty. The THREE components of FUD are Fear Uncertainty and Doubt... and an almost fanatical devotion to litigation.

  • In related news. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:12AM (#10285024)
    Tito Puente has anounced that he too will be suing Mambo.

  • Huh. (Score:5, Informative)

    by rincebrain ( 776480 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:15AM (#10285042) Homepage
    I could be misunderstanding it, but Connolly seems to be saying his code, which he paid a developer to write and told he could not GPL and rerelease it, was put into the Mambo main branch, while his developer is saying it's similar code in function, not [necessarily] form, and reimplementing it for free after being paid to write a proprietary version isn't the same as submitting the code he wrote for Connolly to the Mambo source tree. I could be mistaken here, but couldn't this easily be resolved by a simple comparison of the Mambo and Futuremore source code? I mean, really.

    In addition, the Newsforge article's summary claims that Connolly's code is out in the wild, whether it should be or not. That's not been proven, in any of the data I've read. Shouldn't the dispute first resolve whether the code is actually from the Furthermore source before the issue of licensing even comes up?

    I don't know about you, but this does sound a lot like SCO...
    10 PRINT "Your open source project has our code!"
    20 PRINT "Prove it!"
    30 PRINT "We don't have to prove it, it's our code!"
    40 GOTO 20
    • Just like the SCO case can simply be resolved by code comparison, right?
    • Wait this code is protected by Trade Secret statutes.Well IIRC then Mr. Connelly may sue his developer for leaking said Trade Secrets but since they are now in the wild they will no longer be coverd by these statutes and he must apply for patent protection or use civil litigation and go after offenders for copyright violation. But under no cicumstances are the users in danger of criminal charges.
  • This guy is unbelievable. From the article:

    They wrongly contend that since the code was put into the "General Public License" pool, it too must be GPL. ... Bottom line: As express permission was never granted, their transfer of copyright ownership without express written authority is null and void.

    That is the crux of the matter. Gee, if I modify gpl code and then redistribute it under gpl and the accompanying source, I'm going to get sued for copyright infringement?

    I hope the EFF beats this guy with a c

    • > Gee, if I modify gpl code and then redistribute it under gpl and the accompanying source, I'm going to get sued for copyright infringement?

      Yes you can , as long as you don't hold the copyright. Copyright law precedes GPL here.

      But to violate GPL , the code you modified is distributed in binary form to a customer who doesn't recieve a written promise of source. GPL violator is then the distributor and not the author or the copyright holder .

      I modify lots of FOSS tools (lxr and bugzilla) for work ... a

  • RTFA - seems open and shut, in Mambo's favor. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Attitude Adjuster ( 683211 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:22AM (#10285075)
    Seeing as people seem to be posting Connelly's claims, or random craps they've thought of withour RTFAing, I'll post this...

    While the first bit of the newsforge article almost goes out of its way to give Connelly's claims the benefit of doubt, the most interesting bit is the coder's (Sakic) reply at the very very end of the article (I know most of you didn't or can't read that far ;) ).

    To summarize it: 1) The code delivered to Brian Connolly is not the same as the code implemented in Mambo. 2) The code delivered to Brian Connolly was derived from GPL, Copyright Miro International Pty. 3) Brian Connolly distributed copies of Mambo that had the so-called 'infringing' functionality under the GPL. 4) There are no copyright assignments with my signature on. 5) Brian Connolly has no trademarks or patents on anything resembling the disputed functionality.

    Emir Sakic http://www.sakic.net

    • mod the parent up... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pikine ( 771084 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:57AM (#10285256) Journal

      ... if I had mod points right now.

      The NewsForge article is so bipartite structured such that it gives Connolly's view, then Emir Sakic's view. There is no formal introduction nor conclusion. If you start reading and bail out, you'll think the article is entirely pro-Connolly. If you read towards all the way to end, you'll get a much better perspective.

      To pull our heads away from the heat, if this story was never /.'ed, Connolly and his Furthermore would probably never be heard (NewsForge said he was "far from being the pioneer in this industry"). Now he's given much more publicity than he could never earn if he had not hyped up the issue.

  • this is stupid (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    you cant copyright colspan

  • Thanks /. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Skraut ( 545247 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:29AM (#10285118) Journal
    I was in the processing of browsing Mombo's webpage trying to decide if it was the right CMS for my use. Suddenly it dies with a "This site is temporarily unavailable" error.

    I check slashdot, and now I know why it's dead.

  • I think he might be right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NtroP ( 649992 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:31AM (#10285127)
    If I understand the facts right, this guy paid a professional programmer to modify GPL code in order to produce (what he thought would be) a competititive advantage for his website. He never said that the programmer was allowed to give those modifications back to the Mombo team (he claims he has a "contract").

    He is redistributing Mombo from his website, but theoretically it would only be original Mombo code (without his contracted mods) if the mods hadn't made it back into the main branch.

    If I were paid to, say, take The Horde, and make modifications to it for a company in order to make it interact with product X, thereby giving this company a (percieved) advantage over their competitors, I have no right to take the modifications and give them back to the The Horde development team without permission from the company I was contracted by.

    Now, If the company I wrote the code for were to go on and sell "their version" of The Horde, it would have to be GPL'd, but they are only using it internally - so it doesn't.

    This is one of the advantages of OSS to comercial entities - they can take the code, modify it to their needs and use it without hassle. They can make money with an OSS program, they just can't make money off selling a derivative of a program without sharing the love (GPL'ing it).

    Although, I'd like to see this guy do the noble thing and release the changes back to the Mombo team as a show of good will and gratitiude for being able to use the code as a base for his success, he is in no way compelled to do so.

    • I hate to reply to myself, but after posting, others have posted with more information that was not avaiable due to slashdotting :-\

      It appears that the code in Mombo was a "reimplemenatation" of the idea and not just a straight transfer of code.

      That changes things, because apparently there is no patent on the concept of the changes. Whether, the programmer was right to so blatantly use his prior knowledge of the implementation of the "competing code" he wrote, is another story and begs a whole other set

      • Actually, if you read it, the developer claims there was no copyright assignment or explicit contract in place. Without that, the contractee really only has the right to use the code developed - the money changing hands is generally considered acceptance of a contract for the time involved and services rendered, but that doesn't involve a transfer of copyright unless there is a document signed by both parties or comparable evidence of contractual agreement to such a term.

        I don't think this looks bad for

    • While you are correct on all these things, the real question is what happens to that code if said party leaks it? As far as my understanding of the GPL goes, in order for him to have commissioned the modification of it, he must accept the GPL (in other words, you don't really need to accept the license to just use, but to modify, you absolutely do). Thus, he has accepted the terms of the GPL, which include the fact that anybody to whom you distribute a binary has the right to a copy of the source which mu
    • If I understand the facts right, this guy paid a professional programmer to modify GPL code in order to produce (what he thought would be) a competititive advantage for his website.

      You mean, he took code released under the GPL license and modified it, whilst withholding the changes from the community, in an attempt to give himself a competitive advantage?

      He never said that the programmer was allowed to give those modifications back to the Mombo team (he claims he has a "contract").

      Irrelevant. Under cop

    • If I understand the facts right, this guy paid a professional programmer to modify GPL code in order to produce (what he thought would be) a competititive advantage for his website. He never said that the programmer was allowed to give those modifications back to the Mombo team (he claims he has a "contract").

      First, the source code has to be licensed under GPL so if a 3rd party gets it, then they can use it under GPL.

      Second, if there was a contract then that "professional programmer" is liable for ALL

  • Snickering away... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:33AM (#10285136) Homepage
    Meanwhile the Mambo community had a discussion on the matter (this is one of several threads) with a general irreverence toward Connolly and his claims of copyright infringement, and the usual flippant remarks and misguided legal analysis that can be found on nearly any blog or forum that discusses such matters.

    I love this paragraph. As a long time /. reader, it just had me snickering away...

  • Comment from a Mambo Developer (Score:5, Informative)

    by broeker ( 38897 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:43AM (#10285190) Homepage
    Brian Connolly will distort this story every way til Tuesday, but there is only one set of facts that matter in this case:

    1. Brian Connolly paid a Mambo Open Source developer to modify 9 trivial lines of an existing GPL component.

    2. One month later, the developer added a similar technique to the Mambo core.

    3. Brian Connolly's actual code NEVER appeared in the core Mambo software in any way shape or form.

    4. Therefore, any of Connolly's claims are based solely on protecting his big "trade secret", or the very "idea" of displaying a leading story following by two columns of headlines.

    5. Any programmer knows how trivial this is, and that this layout technique has been in use since the advent of HTML tables. It is not a "trade secret" that has any protection under any law.

    Please contact Brian Connolly and ask him to produce the offending code. He will not be able to because it simply does not exist.

    - A Mambo User and Developer

    p.s. Furthermore also claims it never distributed the software. This is not only false (we have screenshots of his old download section) but irrelevent given the facts above.

    • I think you'll find he can't produce the code because he wouldn't recognise it if you hit him over the head with it. He seems to be under the impression that it's a seperate component and not part of an existing one and seriously believes it's a complex piece of work when it's trivial (I hope Emir charged him a boatload of cash for those 9 lines).

  • 9 lines of code?! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 18, 2004 @11:46AM (#10285201)
    Emir Sakic, the developer of code in dispute:

    "I modified an existing Mambo frontpage component and hardcoded nine lines of code that would display the leading story."

    "A month later (October 3, 2003) I developed similar functionality and contributed it to Mambo core. I did not use the same code as the nine lines delivered to Connolly. I implemented a different, dynamic solution with selectable frontpage settings."

    "Mr Connolly still claims that Mambo contains the code developed for him when in fact it does not. If you would take a look, you would see that the code in Connolly's site differs from the code in any version of Mambo.     "

  • Huh? (Score:2, Funny)

    by anethema ( 99553 )
    What do they have against dancers? ..What? This isnt cuba? I gotta go

  • Right off the Mambo front page:

    "Can your PHP/MySQL CMS handle a Slashdotting?
    A little while ago I was curious about how well Mambo would stand up against Post-Nuke under a Slashdotting. The results of that little test can be found here but I decided to refine and expand it a little which is what lead to this test."

    Moments later, after a few refreshes: "This site is temporarily unavailable. Please notify the System Administrator."

    • Re:The irony... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Some Bitch ( 645438 )
      It's still the lead story over here and the site is up and not too slow, it died briefly under the initial rush but overall I'd say it's performed much better than most. I should add, I'm the author of that little benchmark you mentioned :)

  • I don't believe it for a second (Score:4, Interesting)

    by u-235-sentinel ( 594077 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @12:00PM (#10285279) Homepage Journal
    If you are presently using the software application "Mambo OS" in any release post October 3, 2003, you and your organization are potentially exposed to CIVIL LITIGATION and possibly CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.

    If people/companies can be sued for just using software then our legal system would be in worse shape than it is today.

    I've had this argument time and time again with people online. Just by USING something doesn't make you guilty of breaking the law. If I contributed however, well, that's another story altogether.

    For example, if I put something into the New York Times that I didn't have business submitting then sure I'm liable. If I merely purchased a copy of the paper and read it then I'm not liable.

    Our courts might be messed up but they are not stupid :-)
  • /rant ON

    Am I the only one that is fucking sick and tired of everyone arguing about who owns what IP and all the law suits.

    Make it all free.. to hell with the lawyers and IP/copyright law. Its slowly dragging society down and making millionaires out of people that don't deserve it, while restricting freedoms of the common citizen. /rant OFF

    Ok. rant over... move along now.
    • Property is theft. Intellectual property doubly so. It wouldn't surprise me if a country with that view and a billion-plus population doesn't end up dominating the world simply because they're too big to push around and their citizens are mostly free to innovate, while the rest of the world sinks into a quagmire of lawsuits over who owns what ideas.

  • This seems very simple to me (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wrook ( 134116 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @12:10PM (#10285360) Homepage
    IANAL, but this seems like a very simple dispute to settle.

    Mr. Connolly's dispute is with Mr. Sakic. When you pay someone to do creative work for you, you do not necessarily transfer ownership of the copyright with it. First things first, Mr. Connolly must produce a contract that transfers the copyright to him. If he has no such contract, he has no case what-so-ever because he doesn't own the code.

    Secondly, with such a contract, he must show that the code in Mambo actually infringes on his copyright. Without such proof, he has no case what-so-ever because there is no infringement.

    Now, again IANAL, but if Mr. Connolly were to be able to prove both of these things, restitution must come from Mr. Sakic, not from some innocent bystander. The *users* of Mambo are *not* in violation of any copyright law. As an example, it is not infringement of copyright for me to listen to a copy of a song -- only to *copy* it.

    The Mambo team *might* also be infringing since they distribute Mambo. However, I am willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that no court in the world would hear a case against Mambo without resolution of a case against Mr. Sakic. If Mr. Connolly makes no move to sue Mr. Sakic, I believe they are pretty much safe to ignore him (Note: this is not legal advice as I am in no way qualified to give advice).

    Now, if Mr. Connolly instead argues that the code modification is a trade secret, then he also only has a case against Mr. Sakic. Once a trade secret has been released, it is no longer a trade secret. He may indeed have a case against Mr. Sakic in this area (though I highly doubt it), but no one else is at risk.

    So in summary, Mr. Connolly should sue Mr. Sakic if he has a legitimate grievance. Until that issue is settled, he would be wise to keep his mouth shut.

    In my personal opinion, if you hire a free software programmer to modify a GPL piece of software, it is *your* responsibility to explain *very clearly* that you do not want the changes distributed. Distribution of modified GPL code is the norm. If you do not explain this I think you will have a hard time convincing anyone that the programmer should have known better.
  • it has the default latin entries of a portal site that hasn't really been populated with content. Do Mambo users have to fear litigation from a guy who can't even take care of his own site???

  • Whoa (Score:2)

    by merlyn ( 9918 )
    For a minute there, I thought they were going to shut down zombo.com [zombo.com]!

    I'm right in the middle of "doing anything you want" there, and didn't want to be interrupted.

  • If there was no copyright agreement between Emir Sakic and Connolly, then the code that Emir Sakic wrote belongs to Sakic. Everything else here is irrelevant. However, it's unclear to me why Sakic would be asking Connolly to put it under GPL. Did Sakic not know that he still owned the code?

  • Emir is underhanded, Connolly is dense (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anthony Boyd ( 242971 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @01:32PM (#10285827) Homepage

    There seem to be a lot of misunderstandings. I bothered to read the article, the responses (they both added comments to the Newsforge article), and some of the messages posted.

    Some people seem to think that because Mambo is GPL, the code modifications must be released under the GPL. This is only true if Connolly distributes his application. If he keeps the code "within his walls" then he can keep his code changes private. When Emir put the code out there, that violated the GPL which allows Connolly to keep the code to himself in this special case. OK? So Connolly isn't a 100% whack-job.

    But the next misunderstanding is on Connolly's part: his code is NOT in the Mambo codebase! Emir re-implemented the code, and gave it extra functionality. So the whole first misunderstanding is mostly irrelevant, because there is no copied code! And this is (I think) why Mambo keeps asking for more info and not getting it: if Connolly had to give line-by-line details of the violation, we would see that there is no line-by-line theft.

    However, there is the third misunderstanding (or assumption). And that is that many people appear to assume that Emir clean-roomed this. He didn't. From everything I've read, Emir got sneaky: he liked the feature, he wanted it in Mambo, so he took the code he already wrote for Connolly, and tweaked the shit out of it so it looked different and better. And it really is different and better, but it's built right off what he had already done for Connolly. I don't know what to think about this part -- there is no law I know of that would address this clearly. It probably exists, but I don't know of it. And so I'm left thinking that Connolly is completely out of luck and has absolutely no case at ALL, but Emir behaved terribly, and I wouldn't want such a person working on my codebase.

  • Legally arguable, but morally clear (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ishmalius ( 153450 ) on Saturday September 18, 2004 @05:02PM (#10287062)
    I have never heard of these projects or products before this. I contribute to several open source projects, and I believe in Open Source, the GPL, and in the value of altruism. So maybe I can try to be fair when I say that this just sounds wrong.

    Although the contractor's legal standing in this matter likely tilts in his favor, his behaviour in the matter does not pass the smell test.

    If the guy was paid to design and write code for Mr. Connelly, he should give it to Mr. Connelly. Any subsequent use of it, or the ideas, should be done with Mr. Connelly's permission. If Mr. Connelly has responsibilities with respect to the GPL, give him the opportunity to fulfill them.

    Come on. Let's lose this "gimme" hacker's mentality, and take the moral high ground. Let's do things because they are the right thing to do. I would like to think that the Open Source world is populated by gentlemen.

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