Mambo has gone through an evolution, from a proprietary product engineered by Miro programmers in 2000, to a release to the Open Source community under the GPL in April 2001, to a mature product under the protection of a non-profit Foundation. The path is not unlike that followed by other respected Open Source programs which have grown from small beginnings to industry leadership roles. We are proud of that heritage and of the work that all the people have put into making that happen. Mambo is the result of more than five years of work by a large number of people. It is not the sole province of any one company or any one group of developers. It is the product of the efforts of many people working together towards a common goal over time.

Mambo today faces a number of challenges, the greatest of which involve the steps needed to re-shape the organization as a Foundation-driven Open Source project. In the past Mambo has been largely reliant on two groups: The ad hoc community which provided much of the energy, manpower, and talent, and Mambo’s primary corporate partner, Miro.

Reliance on an ad hoc community has served many projects in good stead, but that path also has limitations. Typically the crisis point for ad hoc community-driven projects is reached either as a result of internal pressures, like extreme growth, or from outside pressures, such as threats to the existence of the project. In Mambo’s case it was a combination of factors which lead to the conclusion that the program’s future stability and growth required a shift to a more formal Foundation-driven structure.

In late 2003, Mambo was targeted by legal threats concerning the intellectual property rights to certain pieces of code contained in the core. The problem was severe and cost money, man hours, and eventually the loss of some key community leaders. Miro came to the aid of Mambo, offering legal and corporate resources to protect the development team and preserve the program. Without Miro’s willingness to bear a significant portion of the burden, Mambo, not to mention the many volunteers who were giving their time to the project, would have suffered further.

The idea of moving Mambo into the protection of a dedicated non-profit structure was born out of that incident in 2003 and was compelled by the rapid growth of the program’s complexity, the community, and the installed user base. Both Miro and community leaders backed the creation of a Foundation to shelter the project, though opinions differed sharply about how it was initially formed.

The Mambo Foundation was formed in August of 2005 and today exists for the benefit of Mambo and the community. It is independent and it is absolutely committed to Mambo as an open source project. The Foundation is non profit, open and accountable, and controlled solely by the members. (The Foundation is modelled primarily on Eclipse and GNOME, and is governed by its members via traditional voting and referendum rights.

The Mambo Foundation takes Mambo forwards into the future, as it becomes less dependent on the patronage of a single corporate supporter and less subject to the whims of individual interest groups who may seek to use the community for their personal agendas. The Foundation is the custodian of Mambo's future, and it is what the members make of it.