Mambo License Guidelines & Statement

It is up to each copyright holder to decide how they will enforce the licence for their code. Mambo has always been licensed under the GPL and the Mambo Licensing Guidelines set out the Foundation's position with respect to enforcement of the licence over its code.

To the extent Mambo includes code owned by other licensors, it is a matter for those licensors as to how they will enforce their licence. Third party developers should therefore always obtain their own legal advice as to whether their licensing model is appropriate given the way that their software interacts with Mambo or other software licensed by third parties.

It is our opinion that use of Mambo interfaces does not make “derived works” per se. Function calls to the Mambo API do not, in themselves, create derived works. This is the Mambo Foundation's position in relation to the use of Mambo code. Please note that other licensors may have a different position.

A court will ultimately have to decide the issue should another licensor seek to enforce its interpretation of the GPL on its licensees.

The position statement was issued on 20th June, 2007 to clarify the position the Mambo Foundation takes in regards to its enforcement of the Mambo GNU/GPL Version 2.
The License Guidelines can be found here.

The License Guidelines were developed by consensus in 2003 and were published in the Mambo Sample Data within the distro from August 2004 on. They were last updated in late 2004 to add the clause relating to translations. They have remained unchanged ever since.

Since its inception as an open source CMS under the GNU/GPL in April 2001, Mambo and its wider Mambo community has always recognised the symbiotic relationship between the development and popularity of the CMS and the work contributed by commercial developers. Mambo continues to value the contributions made by commercial and GPL developers alike. The Mambo Foundation intends to keep faith with the community by retaining the License Guidelines as is and hopes that the policy statement will provide the only clarification needed about Mambo's position on licensing enforcement.
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