BurningDogBlog

I've been using Mambo as my content manager (CMS) for many websites, from TomorrowToday.biz to TEXit.net. I've hacked some of the code (especially the phpShop plug-in - it has a display bug in it which I've fixed), customised many of the templates and showed others how to do it too. Mambo has an interesting history as an open source project. Miro International - an Australian-based company - started Mambo as open source and then re-packaged it as Jango which they sell hosting, installation and maintenance for. They initially did a whole bunch of development on it and got the open source community to take it forward. Everyone wins. Except when the corporation tries to grab it back. Miro set up the Mambo Foundation - a community responsible for for controlling the roadmap of Mambo. Not a bad idea. Until...to have a say in the future of Mambo you'll need to fork out AUS$50,000 (£21,000) per annum and commit what appears to be four full-time developers to the project. So, according to the no. 1 Mambo support site, all of the core developers have left the project due to disagreements about keeping the code open source (read their resignation letter). They've taken the Mambo code and formed Joomla! - the future of what Mambo could have been. They've launched a Sorceforge-powered site to keep track of the code - as well as setting up a new website to protect Joomla! - Open Source Matters. The roadmap, is something like this:

The Joomla developers released a schedule of planned improvements to the software. Version 1.1, scheduled for release by the end of the year, will have user interface improvements; versions 1.2 and 1.3 will get new features for governing who has permission to see and modify Joomla-published content; and version 2.0, scheduled for release in 2006, will be overhauled to use version 5 of the PHP software for computer-generated Web sites.

Now it's competition time. Mambo Love.com has been launched to create a community loyal to Mambo. The question I'm faced with is - keep Mambo for my existing Mambo-powered sites? Or migrate to Joomla? Will 3rd party components plug in to both CMS's?

Technorati Tags: mambo, open source, joomla