Mambo and Miro Reunite

The world's fastest-growing Open Source online publishing system, Mambo, has strengthened its ties with Miro International, the founder of Mambo technology.

The joint venture is an Open Source milestone by aligning the creativity of Mambo project and the significant resources of Miro to further mature the online publishing software by providing resources including; training, support and developer certification.

This is great news for Mambo users, developers and programmers as the joint venture will deliver services which the Open Source community needed but could not afford without a benefactor.

The announcement comes after nominated Mambo Core Team members and Miro directors and staff formed the Mambo Steering Committee (MSC), a non-profit association, which, during the past few months, has been defining a way forward.

Miro, based in Melbourne, Australia, developed and released Mambo to the Open Source community five years ago. Miro director Peter Lamont says the ensuing development has seen a global phenomenon that reflects user needs — powerful web publishing tools underlined by a simple interface.

"Although often unnoticed, Miro has continued to support Mambo and the community throughout," he said. "Now with such a wide global following, the need for more financial support, marketing and management assistance has brought Miro and Mambo back together again."

"Our efforts now will be aimed at ensuring Mambo continues to grow exponentially, ensuring the community is given real opportunities to become powerfully scalable for everyone — from a brilliant user experience through to an income generator for developers."

Mambo project leader Andrew Eddie dispelled concerns about Mambo becoming "too commercial", saying the community should be celebrating exciting times.

"The formation of the MSC opens up communication on equal footing. Mambo remains and always will remain Open Source. All of the fun and community the project engenders will continue. Miro will bring the missing pieces to complete the jigsaw we could not have achieved without them."

Mambo Core Team and MSC member Brian Teeman agreed, saying the announcement delivers the following prospects. "This joint venture makes the project stronger, more credible and opens up a pathway for users and developers to progress well beyond what's on offer today," Mr Teeman said.

In summary:

• Mambo / Miro makes the project stronger
• Mambo remains Open Source
• Mambo / Miro is Open Source at its most creative with commercial support through Miro with greater options for programmers, developers, users and organisations
• Miro will provide training and certification
• Miro will help developers achieve great customer satisfaction through professional documentation and support
• There will be more transparency between Miro / Mambo

Mr Teeman described the structure as ideal for Open Source creativity meeting commercial acumen. "Having recently returned from a Mambo seminar in Thailand, I've already seen the benefits of providing structure and resources," he said.

"Students in Thailand have the opportunity to learn to use Mambo as easily as they learn to use a proprietary tool such as Macromedia Dreamweaver. I'd estimate that in Thailand, a very significant proportion of web development is done using Mambo!"

Mr Eddie pointed to a recent copyright claim that had caused the community great concern.

"Miro could have left the development team and the users to be ravaged by the weight of copyright claims and the legal costs. They didn't. Miro has always supported the team and the community. Because Miro sees Mambo as ‘their baby', rather than an income stream."

Mr Eddie said Miro's plans for certification brings many benefits. "The development team will also benefit from such discipline—doing things the right way all the time," he said.

"While this can lead to slower development cycles, less furious innovation, the benefit is a client/developer doesn't have to re-learn the system on every release. This gives people confidence that their time (and money) invested in Mambo is going to give them a return," he said.

Both Mr Eddie and Mr Lamont agreed this approach gives people confidence that if their favoured developer "calls it a day" there is likely to be a directory of other certified people who can pick up the pieces very quickly.

Now Mambo/Miro have official channels of communication and representation through the MSC, both opportunities and threats will be dealt with more efficiently.

Mr Lamont said he believed Miro's investment in infrastructure to support the community, its users and developers will be the glue that bridges Open Source with the commercial world.

"Training, certification and support for Mambo will provide this infrastructure," he said. "The services developed by Miro will be delivered globally and will provide Mambo with the greatest chance of enhanced success, creating highly-paid jobs for skilled Mambo developers and trainers. We want to see Mambo become the vernacular for web site editing."

Mambo is Open Source Software. You can read more about Mambo at www.mamboserver.com and download the latest version of Mambo at www.mamboforge.net. Mambo is released under General Public Licence courtesy of Miro International PTY. Mambo requires Apache 1.3 or above, MySQL 3.23.55 or above, PHP 4.2.1 or above. Users should be browsing the net with Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher, Mozilla 1.7 or higher or FireFox 0.9.3 or higher (Firefox is best supported for Macintosh).

Last Updated( Tuesday, 01 February 2005 )

Copyright 2005