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ActiveState Returns to Open Source Roots

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the if-you-get-lost-return-to-the-beginning dept.

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."

4 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Pender Financial Group Description by Real+World+Stuff · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  2. Q&A from ActiveState by MarkChovain · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Re:What about Komodo? by davidascher · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sorry, no current plans to open source Komodo at this time.

    David Ascher, ActiveState

  4. Good for corporate lackeys by AWG · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!