For the last few weeks a Mr Connolly of Furthemore.com and Literati Inc has made several threats and claims to the Mambo Community regarding alleged use of his code and his ideas in producing "the leading story functionality" in the frontpage of Mambo.
Several news sites have published his story full of untrue where he personally attacks me. Here is my private statement regarding the issue that shows in several points why Connolly's accusations against Mambo and myself are false and without any ground. Disclaimer: The statement below expresses my personal views and not the views of Mambo development team or Miro International Pty. For official Mambo statement regarding the issue visit: http://mamboserver.com/The_News/News/Statement_regarding_Furthermore.com/


Back in September 2003 Mr Connolly paid me to do the Mambo Open Source customization for his site Literatigroup.com. There was no copyright agreement or contract signed.

One of the customizations I did was to enable a "leading story followed by two stories in separate columns" alteration of the frontpage component. I modified an existing Mambo frontpage component and hardcoded nine lines of code that would display the leading story. This alteration was a copy from another part of the original frontpage component released under GPL and copyrighted by Miro International Pty. I was not the original author of the frontpage component in question and thus, Brian Connolly does not own this code.

A month later (October 3, 2003) I developed similar functionality and contributed it to Mambo core. I did not use the same code as the nine lines delivered to Connolly. I implemented a different, dynamic solution with selectable frontpage settings. Again, this code was not same or derived from the snippet made for Literatigroup.com. It was a different development which can be verified by comparing the frontpage component files (I have all files in question).

Mr Connolly still claims that Mambo contains the code developed for him when in fact it does not. If you would take a look, you would see that the code in Connolly's site differs from the code in any version of Mambo. While software implementation can be protected by copyright laws, ideas in software are not covered by copyright. Nothing stops anyone to implement the same (in this case just a similar) functionality using different code. Not to mention that the whole file was a GPL derivative and, as such, must remain GPL.

Mr Connolly still seems to think that he owns exclusive rights to the "leading story" concept in Mambo and requests the frontpage component re-licensed according to his terms. There were hundreds of sites all over the internet that used the same layout even before October 3rd 2003, so Connolly cannot say it was originally his idea (for example see http://news.bbc.co.uk).
I should mention that Connolly has distributed copies of Mambo under the GPL on his homepage (http://www.literatigroup.com/furthermore/, now removed, screenshot available) which means he has acknowledged that Mambo is GPL and Copyright Miro International Pty. Connolly has only contacted Mambo about a year after alleged breach and during this time he was an active forum member knowing of the existence of this functionality in Mambo core. Connolly also sent threatening emails to mambo users directly and has harassed them (see http://www.mamboportal.com/content/view/1562/). He has been taking my words out of context and posted flat lies in try to prove the claims he can't prove by simply comparing the code in question.

To summarize it:
1) The code delivered to Brian Connolly is not the same as the code implemented in Mambo.
2) The code delivered to Brian Connolly was derived from GPL, Copyright Miro International Pty.
3) Brian Connolly distributed copies of Mambo that had the so-called 'infringing' functionality under the GPL.
4) There are no copyright assignments with my signature on.
5) Brian Connolly has no trademarks or patents on anything resembling the disputed functionality.