Metalab Changes Its Name (Again)

Simon Spero writes: "Metalab, the site formerly known as SunSITE, is now www.ibiblio.org . This change has been made in response to a donation by Bob Young and Mark Ewing of Redhat of $4 million; this grant will be used to apply the techniques and philosophies of the Open Source Movement to more traditional kinds of information, creating the first of a new kind of digital library. " Metalab URLs will continue to work. Here's the FAQ and some more press coverage. Really the name change is secondary (I still hadn't stopped using sunsite bookmarks) but this could be really cool.

Comments

the donation did not come from RedHat

[option8]

(consider i'm a little miffed that, once again, i submit a story in a timely manner, holding off on posting until the day of the press conference, and several days later another poster gets the same story posted where mine was rejected. silly me, i thought i had the inside track - being one of the designers of the new ibilio site.. oh well)

the donation did not come from RedHat, as many readers assume. the headline even says the money came from individual investors, which is closer to the mark. reading the full story will reveal that the $4 million donation came from the Red Hat Center (center of what?) which is a "non-profit organization that supports, promotes, and engages in a wide range of initiatives to advance the principles of transparent technology" (Bob Young's term for open source)

the guys from Red Hat started the Center with their own money (acquired from.. duh!) to use in promoting open source projects, even those in competition with RedHat.

RHC has also given big chunks of change (tho none in the $4 million range) to the EFF (electronic fronteirs foundation), probono.net, and the Center for Media Education in Washington, DC

something folks haven't said much about is the plan to make ibiblio more slashdot-like in its sense of community, discussions, and ranking of the content. silly me, i would have thought cmdrtaco would have mentioned that :)