MIRO INTERNATIONAL'S STATEMENT 20.09.2004

Melbourne, Australia-based content management company Miro International has today announced its full support behind the Mambo Open Source Development Team and the community in disputing claims of inappropriate usage of code in "the leading story functionality" in the front page of Mambo, commissioned by Brian Connolly of Furthermore Inc., based in Chicago, USA.

Miro International is the founder and copyright owner of Mambo Open Source, and is also the supporter of the Mambo Open Source project, it¹s development team and worldwide community. CEO of Miro, Peter Lamont said, "Miro rarely gets involved in Mambo Open Source community matters as we have great faith in the core development team. However, Mr. Connolly continues to upset the community with threats of copyright infringement to specific individuals in the community."

"Our understanding is that programming alterations were made to a small part of a Mambo page to alter the way a news item was displayed. This basic concept was subsequently re-written and expanded upon by the developer and released back to the open source community. The developer has stated that there was no assignment of copyright and Connelly has yet to produce evidence to the contrary. The issue of the GPL is simple and well documented. Mambo is released under the GPL and alterations to part of Mambo's functionality do not alter its license," said Mr. Lamont.

"There are many instances of people abusing Mambo's copyright for their own benefit and Miro has been active in stopping them wherever possible," said Robert Castley, Mambo open source project development leader. Mr. Castley said "This incident has highlighted our need to take action and we appeal for worldwide support from Mambo users and the greater technology community to help ensure the continued freedom of Mambo, protect Mambo users and safeguard open source developers."

Miro has confirmed that it is seeking legal advice and proposes to bring an action against Mr. Connolly and Furthermore Inc. seeking to restrain Mr. Connolly from making further threats.

FURTHERMORE'S RESPONSE

We believe strongly that Miro's statement above is at the very core of the problem. Mambo OS is a surreptitious R&D factory for Miro. Of course, they back Mambo! Of course, they have an interest in covering for a wrongdoing. To quote one of Mambo lead developers, “There have been many cases where developers seem to have breached the GPL, for instance, and the community has lashed out without forethought." And who are the beneficiaries? Mambo, and subsequently the copyright holders Miro.

As with Furthermore’s case where our Intellectual Property was then attributed to Miro, all the IP that these poor kids contribute to Mambo’s core is then attributed to Miro. What makes this particularly egregious is that Miro International is a commercial company that sells an almost identical product. These kids are having their pockets picked in the name of Open source and GPL. Many of them kids don’t have two nickels to rub together. We've advised them to ask Miro for their sales revenue figures.

In light of that, Castley's appeal to the OS Community above is reprehensible.