My Amazon Products Feed Bridge component which integrates six Amazon stores into the Joomla Content Management System is now  compatible with the Mambo CMS. For those who don't know Mambo is the parent project from which Joomla sprang.  Making the component work with Mambo is the first step in a program of diversifying the component to run on more CMSs and blogs.

Following recent developments over in the JoomlaSphere  - I withdrew the APF Bridge component and related modules and Mambots(plugins) from the Joomla Extension Directory.  As well as being available on this site the component is listed on the Extensions Professionals website run by the Joint Commercial Developers Association.

For those of you who are unaware of the recent developments to which I refer please read on for a brief summary, some key links and some advice which I think anyone running a Joomla website for business purposes should know.

Joomla Third Party Developers and derivative work 

According to Joomla developers,  all of my work (and any other third party developer) is derivative of Joomla and *must* be released under the same license as Joomla.  That my work is derivative is news to me and given that I start my components with a blank page in notepad (and more lately Zend Studio) I would strongly contest this view. Admittedly I have copied and pasted chunks of code from tutorials and even snippets from 'core' components to use as a starting point and examples of functionality - but given Joomla's basic developer documentation this seems the only way to work out how this stuff works. I would therefore claim that there was no other way to do it - especially on a first component - as the APF Bridge was indeed my first significant Joomla coding project.

Why does Joomla's GPL decision matter?

Well, if every third party developer *has* to release their work under the GPL license then anyone can take a copy of the code and pass it on to other people. The upshot is that if one of my fellow developers releases a fantastic product and wants to charge say $100 for his work - someone could buy it and they then have the right to distribute the work onwards (either for a fee or for free) cutting the original developer out of the loop and cutting off his income stream.

Now - how long is my friend going to be able to develop this component full time? How much revenue can he actually expect to be forthcoming in an environment where his work has no direct benefit to himself?

For you as an end user of commercial Joomla add-ons the question you should ask yourself (and the Joomla team) is whether or not you can expect the component developer to still be around in three, six or twelve months?  Also, as many of us believe that the depth of the developer community has been key to Joomla's success - where will Joomla be headed when the third party developers shift to another CMS?

So, Back to Amazon Products Feed Bridge

Anyway - following this decision - and others by the Joomla core I felt it necessary to diversify and make the component work across a range of CMSs. Actually I feel that I was foolish putting all of my trust in Joomla and that as a former management consultant I should already have contingencies in place. Well - I have now rectified this oversight - but you'll have to wait another month or so for information on three or four much more significant developments.

For now I just want to inform anyone who is looking for an Amazon component for their CMS that Amazon Products Feed Bridge is now available for both Mambo and Joomla (the component is compatible with both - I will check modules and mambots/plug-ins in due course).

If you are just starting out with CMSs - or you have a new project to launch I strongly recommend that you give Mambo another look. This is a long running project which has had its ups and downs but is now rather firmly on the UP. The interface and the workings will be very familiar - afterall Mambo 4.5.3 and Joomla 1.0.0 were exactly the same code - with only a few template and graphical tweaks.

Of course best of all - Mambo users now get the same great Amazon Components that other CMSs have been enjoying.