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Origins of Maho

Technical origins

Maho's technical foundations are deeply rooted in the rich history of e-commerce platforms, particularly drawing from the legacy of Magento and OpenMage:

Maho is a direct fork of OpenMage v21, building upon the solid foundation laid by this community-driven project. Through its OpenMage lineage, Maho inherits the robust architecture and extensive feature set originally developed for Magento, a platform that has been a cornerstone of online retail since 2008.

Importantly, Maho maintains an active relationship with OpenMage. We continuously merge and update our core with OpenMage's new developments, updates, and security fixes. This ongoing integration ensures that Maho benefits from the latest improvements and security enhancements while maintaining its unique features and direction.

Maho is leveraging established e-commerce heritage while embracing a modern forward-looking approach to provide a powerful, flexible, and future-proof on-premises solution for online businesses and pave the way for future innovations in the e-commerce space.

Meaning and pronunciation of Maho

"Maho" (pronounced as "mah-hoh") draws inspiration from various cultural meanings:

  • Maho (or Majo) is the name given to the ancient indigenous people of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, islands in the Atlantic archipelago of the Canary Islands (Spain), home of this project's maintainer.
    The Mahos were a resilient and advanced population who thrived in the challenging island environments before the 15th century. They left significant evidence of their agricultural, social, technological, cultural, and spiritual achievements, which continue to impact the culture of the islands to this day.
    As the Mahos, our platform has a long history, it's simple yet advanced, and it's enduring daring times.
  • In Spanish, it means nice, pleasant, attractive, cool, who doesn't want a cool platform to build on?
  • In Japanese, it means magic or sorcery, reflecting the powerful and transformative nature of what we want to achieve.

Notice there's no "Mage" in our name? That's intentional.
While we honor our roots in Magento and OpenMage, it's time for a fresh start.
Mage was groundbreaking, and we still admire it, but the perception of it being "dead" became a hurdle for ongoing support and development.
By adopting a new identity, we're opening doors to new perspectives and possibilities.
This name change signals to the community that while we build on a solid foundation, we're evolving into something distinctly powerful and forward-looking.

Maho is a new tree growing from time-tested roots – familiar in essence, yet branching out in exciting new directions.