Who is developing for Mambo?

[xos]

Question,

Since all developers left Mambo who is developing?

I am not here for a fight or anything like that but I think the open source community has a right to know.

[Elpie]

Originally Posted by xos

Since all developers left Mambo who is developing?

That's a pretty interesting claim. We were certainly not aware that all the developers have left Mambo

Originally Posted by xos

I am not here for a fight or anything like that but I think the open source community has a right to know.

Mambo is an open source project and like all open source volunteer projects everyone in the community is able to contribute. We have a solid core of regular developers plus others who contribute code sometimes just once, sometimes every couple of months. Is there something in particular you wish to contribute to?

[Superdaantje]

Maybe you can answer the whole question? Who are working active at Mambo at this moment. Thinks this quit normal question? Maybe I’m wrong.

The community can see who are the Forum Leaders why not let them see who are working on the other projects like Development, Q/A testing, Documentation etc.

Is The Mambo-Foundation getting childish? Why censuring the name of an other CMS packets. Joomla or other CMS packets are not on the list? So why this childish action?

[xos]

Originally Posted by Elpie

That's a pretty interesting claim. We were certainly not aware that all the developers have left Mambo


Mambo is an open source project and like all open source volunteer projects everyone in the community is able to contribute. We have a solid core of regular developers plus others who contribute code sometimes just once, sometimes every couple of months. Is there something in particular you wish to contribute to?

You are not answering the question.

Who is developing for Mambo, who are the developers? Give us the names of the development team please. Kindly just tell us.

Good point there Superdaantje

[Elpie]

I have sent a message asking all the developers to add themselves to the code forge so you can see all the names. It is up to them if they wish to do this. We have found that not everyone wants to be named in public and that is each person's choice.

No developers have left since the departure of the three to the fork in May. John Messingham is still the Project Leader and QA Team Lead, Andrés Felipe Vargas Valencia is still the Programming Team Leader, Nicolas Steenhout is still the Analysis & Design Team Leader, and Dean Marshall is still the 3PD Team Leader. Mike Steele is still Documentation Team Leader. One developer is currently on leave (Adi) but all others are active.

Mambo keeps the community informed of who the team leaders are and you can follow announcements by subscribing to the announcements forum.

Mambo does not require developers to formally join teams or to make any kind of ongoing commitment. It is therefore very difficult to say who is active today and that has absolutely nothing to do with being childish or withholding information. Anyone at all can contribute a patch, bug fix or new feature, however that may be a one-off contribution or it may mean that the developer intends to regularly contribute. Apart from the team members who have commit rights, we have no idea of the level of ongoing commitment of any others. This is how open source works. So, if you expect us to provide some kind of "staff roster", well we just don't have one because that's not how we work.

[Superdaantje]

Lynne,

What you are saying I can understand till an certain point. You know for your self that some of what your are saying is not true. Think we do not have to discus all in public.

Example: the announcement of the Team Leaders where you referring to is an old announcement. Those Team Leaders have quit there task a few months ago. (no I’m not talking about the announcement of my self) ;-)
http://forum.mambo-foundation.org/sh...ad.php?t=10582

Also when you do not want to answer questions you make a nice story about it. (this is the way I see it) Now you are saying it is up to the developers. You really know who are core developers and who are contributing to the Mambo code.

And what I meant about childish? Is censoring the name of an other CMS project. Yes the project from 5 of the old core developers of Mambo. (that left a few months ago) And not only censoring the name of the CMS but put some of the old Core Members on silent mode so they can post on the forums. This I called childish and is not what Open of Open Source stands for?

And I also have an question about the Elections of the Board. When I was right these elections had to be in July? When are these elections? Maybe some one of the Board can also inform us about this?

[Elpie]

Ok, let's try to put this a little clearer. In the past, developers had to be approved to join the team and sign a membership agreement. Back then, we did know who was developing because all developers were on a membership roll. That has all changed. Anyone can contribute. Nobody needs approval from the Project Leader any more, nobody needs to ask for permission to provide patches or to add their solutions for bug fixes to the tracker. Anyone who is interested in contributing can join the developer mailing list or come onto the IRC channel. Anyone can submit their contribution to the team.

I have never seen Mambo list all developers - ever. The nearest it got was when Joomla forked and published a letter to the community listing the names of all the people who forked. We don't do a roll call and frankly, its impossible to know just who is working on what or whether someone is around this month and will be here next month, or not. We really just don't know.

I don't personally know who has got commit rights. I know I have and I know John, Andres, Neil and konlong have. Not sure who else. John should be able to answer that one. I really don't see how it matters though. You don't use Mambo and nor does xos, so I am not sure why you are concerned about who is active. Mambo development is going well and we are certainly happy with it.

I'm puzzled by you saying that 5 core developers are working on the fork. Five??? Chad left in February, Cem, Al Warren and Arpee left just before their fork was released in May. I would hope that we don't have someone unethical enough to be here with commit rights, who is still a member of the Foundation, but Missing In Action as well.

The person you are referring to who has had his forum posting rights disabled is back on the forums under a different username. He had been asked repeatedly to respect the forum rules and chose not to. This is a software development project, not a soapbox for attacking people and just as its his right to behave any way he likes, it is also our right to enforce our forum rules.

We shouldn't need written rules here. Courtesy towards other forum users and respect for the work done by volunteers who donate their time and skills free, to provide software to millions of people should be a given.

While questions for the Board should be made to the Board on the Mambo Foundation site, I can answer your question. Elections will be held before 30th November. The Mambo Foundation is required by law to hold the AGM and elections within 5 months of the end of the financial year, which ended on 30th June. Members will be receiving the notice of AGM in accordance with legal requirements.

I trust that answers all your questions.

[Superdaantje]

No. ;-)

Why censoring words of an other CMS (mia) project.

Why not replying to the statement you made on the announcement?
There is an old announcement about Team/Project Leaders. In the mean while thinks have changed. So it is not true what you where saying about the announcement.

Lynne are you sure about the names you mentioned that are involved with the Mambo Development? Or do I know more then you?

And is it really that strange that members of the community ask who is behind Mambo?

Some of the things you write I can understand/believe but some of them I think are nice story’s but your not telling the whole truth.

There is more… think it is better that I stop before I get censored to. Seems Mambo is not standing for Freedom of speech? (this is the way I feel at the moment)

Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship or limitation.

Kind regards,
Daan

[xos]

Originally Posted by Elpie

No developers have left since the departure of the three to the fork in May. John Messingham is still the Project Leader and QA Team Lead, Andrés Felipe Vargas Valencia is still the Programming Team Leader, Nicolas Steenhout is still the Analysis & Design Team Leader, and Dean Marshall is still the 3PD Team Leader. Mike Steele is still Documentation Team Leader. One developer is currently on leave (Adi) but all others are active.

So basically this is Mambo's core developers?

Originally Posted by Elpie

You don't use Mambo and nor does xos, so I am not sure why you are concerned about who is active.

You are right, I don't use Mambo haven't for a very very long time. I use Joomla and not very happy right now with it btw, we have found some problems. But all open source cms have a bit of their own problems.

However just because I don't use it doesn't deny me the right to know who is doing dev work in Mambo. After all it is an open source project, right?

Also, I could be thinking of giving Mambo a try and therefore curious whether it has a stable core development or not. You shouldn't say that.

One thing I'm curious about is, why do core developers keep leaving? I can understand one or 2 leaving for whatever reason but they keep leaving Mambo to fork leaving a trail of bad experiences. First the Joomla guys, now the Mia guys. Who's next?

[Elpie]

As a user of free, open source software you have a right to know who is responsible for the code you are using. That is enshrined in the copyleft licenses, including the GNU/GPL. This information is given to you in the package you download. The CHANGELOG details who committed code and the header blocks in each file provide the details of who is responsible for the code. In Mambo's case, the header blocks give the copyright owner and license details. It is a condition of our copyright that this information is never removed from each file so users of Mambo or derived software will always know the source. Also included is a CREDITS file, giving credit to past developers. This information is also published on http://mambo-developer.org.

As a user of free, open source software you also have the right to modify and otherwise deal with the code within the terms of its license.

There are no other "rights". All GNU/GPL software comes with a disclaimer and gives no warranty. While it is established custom for Mambo to provide a forum and for Mambo developers to provide as much support as they can, this is not a user right. Nor is it a "right" for any user to demand that any FOSS project provide a list of developer names. It is up to each individual to either come forward and add their names to the list of developers on our forge project, or not. They have been asked to do so, but we cannot breach their personal privacy - we have more respect for them (and for the law) than that!

But while we are talking about rights, how about the rights of the forum users? People come here to get peer support for using Mambo. They do not come here to read about people's personal gripes. And what about the rights of the Mambo Team? Every single person who contributes their time and skills to create this great software is a hero in my book. I think they have the right to work on Mambo without external distractions and the right to some respect for the work they do. They also have the right to decide for themselves whether they want to have their names in anything other than the code.

I'm not sure why you write as though you think developers leaving is a bad thing. Volunteers come and go in every project. Forks happen for all kinds of reasons and are not necessarily bad. There have been Mambo forks in just about every one of its 8 year history (we can probably argue that MOS was a fork in 2001 to start with - it sure branched away from the proprietary version quickly ) Joomla has forks, Mambo was forked after the Joomla fork (Elxis) and now there is a new fledgling fork. However, only two forks have ever caused any problems for Mambo - and that was only because of the personal attacks and upheaval they caused. If everybody involved in a fork just concentrated on their code and stopped coming back to cause disruption on the project they forked from, everybody would win. And open source wins most of all.