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ArsDigita Shut Down
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Looks like it's official. Philip Greenspun's ArsDigita has been closed, its assets sold to Red Hat. No word on what Red Hat is planning to do with the GPL'd ArsDigita Community System." You may remember ArsDigita from its grand plans during the dot-com boom.
Philip left ArsDigita a while ago.
From aduni.org:
The goal of ArsDigita University was to offer the world's best computer science education, at an undergraduate level, to people who were otherwise unable to obtain it. ADUni.org is now a site run by alumni of the school seeking to carry on that mission.
In 2000-2001, 34 talented and motivated college graduates attended a one-year, intensive, comprehensive undergraduate computer science program, for free. The program was an experiment in curriculum design, free education, and the effect of the Internet on the future of education. ArsDigita University was the brainchild of entrepreneur Philip Greenspun and the ArsDigita Foundation.
After one year, ArsDigita University lost funding and was forced to close its physical doors. Yet, we prefer to think of the program as dormant, not dead. As we redesign aduni.org, we will continue to host all of our course materials and will provide as much information as possible about the workings of this past year - who we are, what we did, how we did it, what worked, what didn't work, and what we're doing now.
Me
It was a great experience and I hope that the idea will be picked up again someday by another corporation that feels guilty about its sudden wealth.
What? Why should one feel "guilty" about achieving success by offering some product or service of higher quality or at a cheaper price than competitors and still making a profit?
The nadir of his managerial prowess came in a company-wide letter where he compared the act of writing good software to be similar to the killing of jews in hitler's germany
I agree doing that is absolutely poor form (and kind of shows Godwin's law to be true yet again), but Philip Greenspun is Jewish, so I guess he figured he wasn't going to be accused of being anti-semitic, given his stance on Israel, et al.
thenerd.
The camels are coming. I'm in love.
As someone who is involved with a group of ex-engnieers with a large company now starting our own firm I wonder what VC's are thinking of when they remove control from the founders - as the only people who know our code and the direction its going in removing us would be rather futile - yes I know other ENGINEERS would understand our direction but that's not the point. Our company is our baby and yes my financial input isn't to anywhere near the VC level but my risks (IE no job,money or house) are just as bad - we're as determined as they are to see our company succeed.. and I'm sure this goes for other startups as well - LEAVE THE FOUNDERS IN PLACE if you want your ROI to be as good as promised.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
What kind of happy pills have you been taking? In the real world, success is achieved more often than not by screwing customers, exploiting employees, bribery, and violating laws whenever you can get away with it. Of course, it's kinda ridiculous to expect the same people who do that to be plagued by a bad conscience and donate their ill-begotten wealth to a good cause...
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Someone has watched Wall Street too many times, I believe. Corporations are simnply made up of people. There's nothing mysterious that happens to these people, they just go into work each day and try to do their job as best as they can. Yeah, there's some assholes, but no more than there are in any large group. Get that chip off your shoulder.
Well, aside from the question of taste (I, for one, think you can find a good side in this--it is an excellent reminder of what can go wrong with things like "Red Cross inspection of concentration camps", etc), it also gives you interesting insight into how Greenspun views documentation--you can have anything the hell you want going on in engineering, build a completely different product if you want, as long as you make the documentation pretty.
So, if you are ever evaluating something this guy is running, make sure you don't let the SS guide you around. Ask for code examples that implement the documentation he tries to foist on you and reserve the right to do some random audits/unguided investigation...
It would be an interesting exercise to figure out how you would get around the "SS guides" if you were looking at a company and trying to evaluate its product.
Liberty uber alles.