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ActiveState Returns to Open Source Roots
constab writes "ActiveState, the Sophos-owned company that makes free distributions and commercial programming tools for programming languages like Perl, Python, PHP, Tcl and Ruby, has been sold to a Canadian VC firm. According to the article, ActiveState will go back to its open-source roots and continue development of ActivePerl, ActivePython and ActiveTcl. A full set of Mac OS X on Intel downloads is also in the works."
Pender Financial Group (formerly Devon Ventures Corporation) is a merchant bank that invests in emerging growth companies, specifically those in the technology and health care fields. Subsidiary PenderFund Capital Management Ltd. manages the Pender Growth Fund, a venture capital fund that invests in tech companies located in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Pender Financial owns about $30 million in assets under management. Invested companies include high technology light manufacturer Carmanah, aerial mapping and surveying provider Intermap Technologies Corporation, web hoster Radiant Communications, and messaging software designer Voice Mobility.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
This sounds great. Hopefully they will open up, at least make free(beer), some of their more advanced tools. The Perl dev tools are really good. Only time will tell.
It's great that businesses (and organizations alike) can harness the brainpower of brilliant hobbyists to improve their product for free simply by going open source. I cannot think of any industry in which anything like this is so.
It would be interesting to know how much it was sold for, and how much Sophos valued the anti-virus technology.
$23 million is not really a huge number in the scheme of things, but not the kind of money that a company the size of Sophos would throw away lightly!
Do they mean OS X on Intel Macs, or working on cracking a generic version of OS X86 to run on beige boxes (illegal)? The article isn't too clear.
ActiveState have put a Q&A on their website. It has lots of pretty good info, with a little bit of PR thrown in for good measure.
Open Source Root?
It might be a slightly misleading statement, but they have historically done a lot of work _around_ OSS (just not so much _in_).
If you have to be 21 to buy beer, then do you have to be root 21 (that is, 4 years 7 months) to buy root beer?
Let's just hope part of this "back to the roots" thing they FINALLY improve ActivePerl so it can _finally_ install XS compiled modules from CPAN.
It the CamelPack guy that won the "vertical metre of beer" challenge can enhance ActivePerl to do it in only 2 days, why has it taken ActiveState so long?
"We'll go back to our roots by continuing what we currently do." - Huh?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
They are talking about ports of ActiveState's perl/php/python/tcl/ruby on intel OS X.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
Dunno about Perl and Python, but I use ActiveTcl.
I would say that most perl users on the Windows platform are still very much using ActiveState.
- oZ
// i am here.
You may or may not be correct about the company's prospects, but I'm sitting here raising my hand, and I know a lot of others are too. It's *nice* to have a reasonably stable distribution from an identifiable vendor when you're stamping out new servers for your enterprise.
---------
get your war on
I tend to use Cygwin's distribution of Perl on Windows. Granted I'm not using Perl for heavy lifting but it works for me. Anyone used Cygwin perl in a production web environment?
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You are obviously speaking from a blank mind. Check out the mailing lists and you will see a very much alive (Active)Perl community.
I used to use cygwin heavily (not just for perl), but with recent versions, it has gotten very very slow. For many of my scripts, ActivePerl is more than 100% faster than cygwin.
Another thing is that cygwin has a number of bugs when working with sockets (e.g. select() uses 100% CPU).
LL
*raises hand*
:)
ActiveState Komodo is an _excellent_ development tool. It's pretty much replaced Vim on my desktop for most editing, although I've not quite gotten the hang of the GUI editor.
Syntax highlighting warning you of standards incompatible XHTML? Go Komodo
True, I _did_ have to buy it, but maybe they'll Open Source it now?
I don't use cygwin for perl, but I do use it for shell scripting in Windows. Mind you, nothing I've done is very portable, but it is easier since I grew up on bash scripting. :)
Combine with WinMacro, or another windows-native automator and you can make some very crazy creations that were never meant to exist.
Maybe I am missing something, but OS X already comes with perl, python, php, ruby, and tclsh. To what end is ActiveState porting their packaging of such things to OS X?
Is this just for compatibility purposes, for software already written to target ActiveState's packages?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Actually I've been working with perl on and off for 8 years now and I'd say that at least 80% of the perl devs I've met (myself included) used activeperl whenever they needed perl on windows (which we would generally try to avoid mind you) for everything from UI apps that used the same framework as our web apps to mobile demos on windows laptops for the sales guys. It kept everything quick and easy, which gave us more time to work on the core engines for the products we were working on.
But yes, I wish CPAN wasn't quite so flakey
Loop, twist and loop again.
>> everyone use Active(perl,python) raise your hand. i don't see many hands.
Sure you would. If you wait for others to respond. I have been using ActivePython for over 4 years now. They should have a fine service model. Large corporations would be glad to license support if they develop software over these tools. And unlike JBoss, ActiveState does not need to develop to the same extent. They spend less money, may make make money only proportional to that. But to dismiss that is too early. Dynamic Languages are only begining to get accepted into the enterprise. They should be prepared well by the time the market is ripe.
If you hack on perl on windows, I think optiperl is a much better ide. I bought and that means something, I have never seen such advanced syntax highlighting as in that editor, you have to check out the screenshots.
I've gone back and forth between ActivePython and regular python.org Python on Windows, and I can't honestly see any benefit to using ActivePython for my particular needs. I recently tried Komodo and I like it. I'd tried it years ago and ruled it out, but now it's much better. PyDev on Eclipse wasn't working well enough for me (esp. on Mac), though I'm about to try the latest version. But Komodo Professional is a bit pricey, and more than Wing IDE.
Apparently that is not going to happen, according to an ActiveState employee post on Slashdot.
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
Seriously, I think you're right. I can't see ActiveState surviving for long now. I don't suppose Sophos would have sold them if there was any mileage left.
However, It is a shame that Sophos didn't try to captilise on the "open source movement" to help development of the ActiveState products. I like Sophos products and their generally sensible advice about virus threats, as compared to the over-hyped "sales pitch" from Symantec and McAfee.
Anyway, good luck to ActiveState. I fear they'll need it.
return 0; }
Indeed. I (through my company) have licences for a bunch of their Perl tools for Windows because at work I have to use a Windows machine. Having Windows around is good when it comes to ensuring code is portable, anyway. There are certain CPAN modules which do not currently build on Windows which one must avoid if attempting to cross-platform Perl apps.
I can understand why some would use Cygwin but I personally gave up on Cygwin for all uses a few years back since I was constantly running into issues with multiple applications installing their own copies of the cygwin DLL and it getting all confused, not to mention the fact that Cygwin stuff always starts up so slowly. Instead, I use native ports of most of the "standard" GNU command line utilities, ActivePerl and a bunch of other all-native bits and pieces to make my usage of Windows less of a pain in the rear.
Note also that ActiveState has a tool for packaging up perl applications into Windows executables. It's a total hack revolving around a self-extracting archive but it's transparent enough to the end user that at my office we have several little home-grown tools written in Perl but most users don't even have Perl installed let alone know or care that they're written in Perl.
You could make good money in Sudan with that theory.
I have been using ActivePerl for 5 years now, and ActivePython for 1.5. Komodo is a great IDE, but what makes ActiveState great is basically just the fact that they are ActiveState.
In a corporate environment, using software from an actual company makes managers and IT folk feel warm and fuzzy. And yes, I realize that ActiveState is just mostly just nicely packaging up available open source software... but I don't tell anyone that. Corporate types tend to like it when they can buy something from someone, or at least point to a (stable) company that sells the product. Saying I'm using ActivePython goes over much better than saying I downloaded something from community-based python.org. And no, I'm not saying any of this makes sense, but it has been my experience for the past five years.
If it weren't for ActiveState, I would be forced to write in VC++ or VBA. Thanks to them, I'm using perl and python for my job every day. And that is pretty awesome.
So, keep up the good work, ActiveState!
The dev tools are fine. Eclipse can debug perl and even javascript seamlessly - allowing you to watch variables, stop on a given line, etc. with an embedded webserver and webbrowser. What isn't is the ActivePerl repository. Its almost entirely built by scripts, and the scripts are easily tripped up.
Hopefully, they'll put a bit of effort into actually converting CPAN packages to ActivePerl so that ActivePerl enjoys a more complete collection of packages. Its not just the little, barely used packages that are missing. For example, Template-Toolkit isn't on ActivePerl. Maybe they could get packages from others who are currently maintaining ActivePerl repositories of tons of missing packages.
Then maybe I can stop maintaining my virtual *nix workstation at work just to create ActivePerl packages.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Oi, I use it in my personal dev chain at work, and I've pushed this out to , errr, another 5 people or so.
I'd be more worried about the fact that ActiveState will be used and dumped by the venture capitalists. For those with short memories, look at what happened to ArsDigita, the company started by Philip Greenspun.
In a sentence: take successful/profitable open source company and run into the ground by imposing expensive dinner consuming and buzzword spewing venture capitalists. Stand well back.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
Its true though... It seems all sophos wanted is PureMessage and the dumped ActiveState as soon as they could.
Personally, I would like to see ActiveState develop another sieve based milter and open source it. Puremessage was a great product with great support when I used it at my last job.
-Kahn
Agreed. In my previous job, we used ActivePerl extensively, in standalone scripts and on NT/2000 with IIS. In my current job, we use it even more internally (mrtg, various scripts, web apps). The ease of adding packages and the seamless integration in IIS makes it a very valuable tool (since we will continue to run on windows for the foreseable future and have tons of code in VBScript (*sigh*), the last part is especially important).
De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum
Agreed...
It would be nice of they'd open source their Perl.Net implementation, for example.
Throw the bums out!
I don't suppose Sophos would have sold them if there was any mileage left.
This statement makes no sense economically. There was a buyer and there was a seller. Your claim is that the buyer would not have sold it unless it was worthless. According to this theory, nobody should ever buy used cars because people would not get rid of them until they are about to break down. Nobody would sell houses until the pipes are about to burst. Etc. But an economist would say merely that the buyer values the acquisition more than the seller. In this case, the buyer is a company that claims to believe that ActiveState will succeed if it is allowed to focus without the distraction of being part of an anti-spam company. The seller claims to agree. Why should we doubt them? The buyer, in particular, has no incentive to lie, and I presume that they've done more analysis of ActiveState's growth potential than a random /. poster.
Yeah, it would be cool if they open sourced it, but Komodo is definitely the coolest pieces of software that I've ever actually paid for. I hate shelling out the dough but it is such a cool IDE. Maybe someday the perl/python/ruby plugins for Eclipse will be better but until then Komodo has no competition.
What the hell? You don't need to improve ActivePerl at all. You just need to improve the rest of your system, by installing a suitable C compiler. Okay, yeah, it might be slightly nice if ActiveState were to provide a compatible environment for download side-by-side, but I certainly don't think it needs to be default. PPM is more in line with what "windows people" expect anyway :)
The comment is ambigious. The only thing that makes sense to me in terms of what they might mean is that they are going to modify Visual Perl/Python/Ruby (active state products which are modified versions of Perl, Python and Ruby that run as part os Visual Studio) so that it can compile OSX executibles. That isn't much work and would be OSX on Intel specific so it makes sense. I don't have any inside information so YMMV and should.
In a corporate environment, using software from an actual company makes managers and IT folk feel warm and fuzzy.
/me shrugs
Second this *ten times over*.
I've been suggesting perl for producing test harnesses for ages (writing them in C is just a waste of time), but the folks running things just don't *trust* perl. Until someone discovered ActiveState. I walked in one day and found them using the commercial Komodo, happy as a clam, and talking about how great perl was.
Confused the hell out of me.
The only thing I can guess is that if you have business roots, you're always trying to figure out the other guy's angle. Why is he doing something for you? What's he planning to get? If business folks can figure this out, and decide that it's aligned with their own interests, then they feel okay accepting the deal.
Open source software just doesn't make any sense in a model that only recognizes human time and direct monetary value. So you get people who *never* have worked with hobbyists who like producing free stuff. They've never worked in an environment in which the marginal cost of production and distribution can approximate zero. It's very reasonable for them to look very dubiously at software, thinking "I can't figure out how this guy is going to profit from this, so I'd better stay the hell away, since he might try some sort of horrific extortion down the line. Who the hell would write software for *fun*? I have to yell at people to get them in on time to meet our deadlines!"
On the other hand, doing a deal in which the other guy is clearly making a profit means that they don't need to imagine ways in which they can get stabbed in the back later. They can be comfortable believing that the other guy is simply happy making the deal.
It's a weird mentality from a hobbyist standpoint, but it's the only way I can explain why so many companies look at Debian and walk away quickly but are happy as a clam buying Red Hat Enterprise Edition.
As long as I get to use something at work that I can freely use myself the rest of the time, I'm all for it.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
ActivePerl installs XS modules from CPAN just fine if you have a suitable compiler installed on your system; Microsoft Visual C++ or gcc (MinGW). ActivePerl will automatically reconfigure itself to match the compiler found.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,69946-0.htm l
Lego brought in top level hobbyists to develop the new Mindstorms NXT kit. Brilliant move IMO.
I've been using ActivePerl these past two weeks - not that I haven't before. The install is so quick, it's forgettable. Never have had any problems using ActivePerl. Yes, I am glad there is a co. that stands behind it. Perl is awesome, but if left to the whim of fate on Windows, I fear the angry mob of Python, Ruby, whatever is new and thinking it's better than everything before it type thinking. I am glad that Perl proves itself worthy.