MOS no more - Mambo for sure ;)

[idigital]

Well, just in case you haven't seen the breaking news over at the official site I'll update the mambers here...

After recent negotiations with Miro (the company that created Mambo) the core dev team have announced that the official name will now change from "Mambo Open Source" to plain Mambo.

So the popular term for our favourite CMS, MOS, will now be phased out. Everyone will have to change their terminology and their site and software names to reflect this change to "reduce confusion":

Originally Posted by Lil Devil

A great strength of the 'Mambo' brand is in it's name, and this move will ensure our product is not diluted in any way and will reduce the confusion for many when faced with Mambo, Mambo Open Source, MOS etc. The renaming will start to take place with immediate effect and will take a couple of weeks to rollout completely.

We, therefore, ask you the community to support us is this move and also make the necessary changes to your references, bookmarks, sites etc.

Now, risking flames and such, there are a couple of points I'd like to make about this decision.

It is true that a great strength of the Mambo brand is in it's name, that name is Mambo Open Source (MOS). The Miro version was differentiated by being called plain Mambo CMS, and as they haven't changed their name I can see there being some confusion between the "REAL" Mambo (MOS) as Robert put it and the commercial Mambo. At the moment MOS is a CMS, so it would be known as Mambo CMS, as is Miro's Mambo.

OK, if that's not confusing I don't know what is.

The other thing is that this is supposed to reduce confusion between the different 'flavours' of Mambo (there are only two current Mambos). Well, when 5.0 comes out our Mambo will become known more as a Web Application Framework than a CMS, so indirectly this will provide free advertising for Miro's commercial CMS.

If that's hard to follow, I'll put it like this. Joe Blog hears about the wonders of Mambo and decides to use it as his CMS, after checking out 5.0 he decides it has too many features and he chooses Miro's Mambo CMS instead as it is focussed on being a content management system and that is all.

Don't get me wrong, I don't oppose this decision, I just think that it will be a while before this move reduces confusion.

Who knows maybe there are more decisions being made behind closed doors regarding Miro's Mambo, it would be nice if the vast community supporting this project had been consulted on such a big move.

I know some of you may be thinking I'm being petty, pedantic or attacking Robert or the core team. That's not my motivation. A name change, even if it seems small, is a big change. I'm just another concerned mamber of the community.

[tonyskyday]

One thing I think you are missing in your analysis is that most people just call it Mambo anyway.

[X-F4CT0R]

Hmm It's very interesting but they havent changed the Mambo Open Source on their main website. Check www.mamboserver.com, it still says Mambo Open Source at the top

[TJay]

One thing I think you are missing in your analysis is that most people just call it Mambo anyway.

Simplicity is a wonderful thing

Chuckles

[idigital]

Originally Posted by tonyskyday

One thing I think you are missing in your analysis is that most people just call it Mambo anyway.

As well as MOS, which I love as an acronym. Sounds good and it's only one syllable.

I still fail to see how this will reduce confusion between Mambo and Miro's Mambo CMS. For example, "There is no need for confusion between the Mambo CMS and Miro's Mambo CMS". That's a hypothetical quote btw

If you're reading this, vote in the poll

[mamboguy.com]

If you are one of the mambo developers, as you user title suggests, you would do well to support the developer team in this decision. The last thign mambo needs is a divided developer team.

Please don't take this as a personal attack.

[idigital]

Hehe. No no, I am not a core developer! Mambers has a feature where you can join groups from your control panel, at the moment you can join a Developer or a Designer group and then you can post in the special club forums.

I do support the core development team, I just have my own opinions as an independent MOS (erk, I mean MAMBO) developer.

As for a divided developer team, you'd have to talk to Phil about that. Apparently he had a falling out recently, although I think he fell back in again.

Me, I wouldn't be a core developer if you paid me. Far too much responsibility

They're doing a great job though. I just don't quite understand this move to change the name of our beloved MOS. Ah well, them's the breaks.

<checks the poll> Look, it's neck and neck at three all

[idigital]

You know, it's really not considered polite to post the same reply to two different forums in two different threads, Robert.

For anyone who wants to read the thread the response was written for:

Mambo - Open Source

Sheesh.

<edit>
Hmm, well this post doesn't make much sense now, as Robert/Casper deleted his crossposting. Apparently Lil Devil setup this account here on Mambers to pretend to be a new user surprised at a thread I started:

4.6 - A Short History

Oh yeah, and for anyone who doesn't know, Lil Devil and Casper are both characters created by the same kids comic company as far as I can remember. Funny.

So, there you go. Jeez.

<edit>
Well. It seems there was more afoot that I realised. Despite the connection between the two aliases, it seems that Andrew Eddie was responsible for Casper's first post. Who knows which member of the core team used the casper account for the cross-posting. This is not the kind of behaviour I would expect from the core development team.

<edit>
Hell. Now it seems that Andrew's admission was regarding ANOTHER account, George Fungus, who also responded to the "4.6 A Short History".

So. It seems there are two fake accounts, solely created to stalk me to discover my "true motivations". Sick.

[manuman]

For those of us in Oz... we were wearing Mambo long before developing for it.

Didn't confuse me then .... won't now.

[TheGreek]

I'm think that the confusion is going to increase. Miro's Mambo (which is still credited in the default footer of MOS presumably released MOS to the open source community to:

1/ increase their own visibility
2/ see what Ideas would develop in a OS environment that they could maybe feed back into their commercial product Mambo CMS

(I'm guessing here)

i would have thought it not only polite to Miro to retain the Open Source suffix but more accurate to the 'product'. For good or bad Mambo (OS) is open source. Personally I feel it is an asset but when I try to sell the system to a client I want it to be transparent what they are getting. i'm not selling them an off the shelf software package and they must take on the good and bad of the Open Source ethos.

So I vote (even if it is to late) for MOS.

Why change it if it isn't broke?

Further more I agree with the sentiment aired earlier that the core team appear to be taking decisions behind 'closed doors'. I feel that the way the announcement of 4.6 has been badly handled and I feel that as a result development of CMT is grinding to a halt. I for one don't feel like investing development time in CMT for 4.5 when I'm told that they probably won't work with 4.6. i don't have time to find out why or if the change will be massive or trivial I've just stopped until 4.6 is in beta.

Anyone else?