Mambo License Guidelines

Learn more about how Mambo is licensed and how this affects you.

Mambo is released under the GNU General Public license (GNU GPL).The GNU GPL provides for a person or persons to distribute Mambo for a fee, but not actually charging for the software itself, because Mambo is free. Mambo is free to share and change, but if you do change it in anyway, can you also change the license and make it commercial? No! The whole GPL is devoted to ensuring this does not happen. Copyright, a much more refined and stringent law will prevent this as well.

So with regard to Mambo, the GPL and copyright:

You MAY distribute it and charge for that service. You MAY change it, add design and content to it and you MAY charge for that. You may NOT alter the license and you must NOT alter the copyright. You do NOT have to show a ‘Powered by Mambo’ graphic, as it not a copyright notice.

In other words, you must NOT pretend that Mambo is yours, and you must NOT charge people for Mambo.

Use Mambo to empower yourself and your clients by taking away the ‘Black Magic’ that surrounds putting content on the internet. Charge for the value you add and not for the hard work that Miro, the Mambo Development Team and the Mambo community have put into it.

Guidelines:

Mambo is « free » software released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

The word « free » has two legitimate general meanings; it can refer either to freedom or to price. When we speak of « free software », we’re talking about freedom, not price. (Think of « free speech », not « free beer ».)

Free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

  • The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
  • The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs
    • Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
  • The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.
  • The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
    • Access to the source code is a precondition for this