NYCPHP Meetup

[Mitch Pirtle]

On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 12:02:22 -0400, Tim Gales <tgales at tgaconnect.com> wrote:
> 
> First off, thanks for setting this strait.
> What you say makes a whole lot more sense to
> me than that news story.

This should be a grim reminder to EVERYONE just how easily the media
can be manipulated.  C|Net's original story basically presented
Brian's claims as fact, and never even attempted to contact Miro or
Mambo to see the other side of the issue - and in fact, presented
Brian's claims without even asking for any kind of verification
whatsoever.

> If he was distributing a 'derived work' based on code
> whose copyright is held by Miro and published under GPL,
> then he is obligated to give his changes or mods to Miro --
> if indeed the Mambo copyright holder wants them.
> 
> This fact that he was publishing his changes seems
> to me to be diametrically opposed to what this
> guy was claiming (again as nearly as I could make
> out from the news article) -- that the code was stolen
> from his unpublished work.

Again, Brian does what is in Brian's interest, and that is it.  He
took Mambo and some third party products, stripped all of the credits
and copyright notices, and rebranded it as his own.  So not only did
he distribute his stuff as GPL, he was in violation by removing the
credits and copyrights to boot!

> It is even worse that he is threatening to take action
> against the end users of Mambo (as you mentioned in
> your post).
> 
> If this guy gets away with this (wins any sort of
> legal judgement), it could definitely put a scare
> into prospective clients, who you might be trying
> to persuade to use open source code -- Mambo or not.

There is no legal threat from Brian, as he knows he has no evidence to
back up his claims.  Just look at his forum posts at mamboserver.com's
community forums (he was 'literati' at the time) and you will see that
when we called his bluff, resorted immediately to his smear campaign
and intimidation tactics with end users - and note, that he knows he
has no legal grounds to threaten anybody, he is REALLY doing this to
stop adoption of Mambo.

And as we are a volunteer-led effort with no funding, there is little
opportunity for us to go after him in court - with what resources? 
Hence the creation of the defense fund (hint, hint).

-- Mitch