Slashdot Mirror
Andover.Net Acquires Freshmeat.Net
Today Andover.Net announced that they
have acquired Freshmeat. They promise
never to put scoop and I in the same room for fear of the carnage
that would ensue. (j/k). Actually scoop had all the same reasons
as I did: running Freshmeat has been a hectic one man show for a long
time. Andover has done of good job giving me the resources I've needed to allow Slashdot to expand, and now they'll give scoop the
same helping hand with fm. Very cool.
That's really cool. Freshmeat has always been a great resource, and I'm glad to see that it will keep on being there when I need it. Thanks Scoop!
Great, now freshmeat can go downhill just like slashdot has. Seriously, this site doesn't get updated as often as it used to. Weekends are particularly sporadic. One gets the feeling that now that the owners have "made it", they're out spending the dough instead of minding the shop.
Yay! I really got it! (and got moderated down too. 2 for 2!) I can finally die happy. BTW, it is rather odd that this unknown company is snapping up all these online "supersites"
A long time ago when I used to visit freshmeat, there was lots of really interesting software. Now its bloated with CTRL+ALT+DEL type programs written in GTK. A lot of it is crap. I would rather see less postings with really good content than a bunch of useless crap.
How long will it be before we see that headline? Hmmm? November?
Don't worry.. soon either AOL or Microsoft will buy out Andover.net and then we'll get to see the lovely Slashdot logo replaced with "AOL" or "MSN".
Looks like andover.net wants to be bought out by someone. RedHat? VA Linux? Hmmmmm.
Red of course. What color is YOUR Ferarri? If Rob doesn't own a Ferarri yet he really boggled the ball with the slashdot sale.
The news reports were saying over a million dollars changed hands in the slashdot sale(although the official number was never released). That qualifies as "Rich" in my book.
There's something really bothersome to me about such profit taking in the free software community. It just doesn't seem right somehow. The programmers who made all of this possible aren't the ones getting rich.
slashdot's nameservers are at upn.net.. the only contacts listed by "whois" are cmdrtaco and dnsadmin@upn.net. Now, if andover.net owned upn.net, I'd be concerned... but it looks like dn.net hosts Andover's nameservers. Otherwise, the only way they could do that is if they either forced Malda to do it (which I doubt he'd do.. and if he did, it means MS could have just directly paid him to do it), or to aquire upn.net.
I don't know if I'm the only one who thinks this, but I have found the general quality of the items on /. to have decreased since the money started rolling in. Of course, I was frustrated (pre andover) when it seemed like Rob and the guys couldn't really keep up with the pace at which ./ was moving.
./ is turing into more of a "quirky geekzine" than a purely informative website. Already, certain aspects of /. and the community of readers are starting to seem less fresh than before... as though now Rob and Jeff have too much time on their hands and are starting to get bored with all of their new toys.
/. was getting bought out by Andover. But when I find myself spending less and less of my time bothering to read /. (even though there are more things being posted than ever), I have to wonder whether the buyout really improved anything other than a few Hope College graduates' bank accounts.
However now it seems like
I would like to welcome all of the ad wizzards to open source. I was not at first disturbed by the news that
News and Software sites being bought by COMPANIES, imagine that? Funded by companies. A company, you know, them things that have price tags and can be bought by other companies... Am I scared? No. I go to many comercial news sites as well. And freshmeat or slashdot aren't commercial (right?). Money is something you can't avoid for long. Kevin Holmes "extrasolar" klh@sedona.net
Do they offer DSL access in the Boulder area? They seem cool, maybe THEY can offer me some broadband...
Plus, someone will do a website a-la-Slashdot or Freashmeat, if Andover.net, were bought out by, say, Microsoft (or AOL, or something).
So it doesn't really matter. There will always be people you will take matters into their own hands.
For the love of God:
please, please, please GET A LIFE!!!
Thank you.
Don't be surprise if more Linux sites being acquired by Andover. Me think Microsoft [Gates/Allen/CNet/ZDNet or any Microsoft-interest] is behind Andover.net
Good quote! HEre's another: "I thought you said Windows 98 would speed up the internet!" "It does... studies have shown that Windows 98 is 5 percent..." *BANG*
Has anyone recently visited andover.net? Right at the top it says "Now serving Two Million Web Builders -Stuff that Matters". Where did they get that from? Hmm. I thought that was kind of funny. A lot of people are bad mouthing Andover, along with slashdot and freshmeat for selling to them. I don't think its such a big deal. Andover is just positioning themselves to be the premier web portal for geeks and computer professionals. I think Andover is a useful site.
I think Andover executives get unlimited moderator points. :-)
Do you work on weekends? I sure don't. If I just sold my successful website that I created out of the vapors 2 years ago to some shmuck company for a lot of dough I'd be out partying too. ;-)
Someone please explain to me why everone is bashing a group that is trying to help one (now two :) of the largest linux site survive??? I guess they would rather everything wither and die due to lack of funds and time. Oh well.
Let's hope andover.net doesn't feel the need to sell out to somebody else, but why shouldn't they, just the same thing as slashdot/freshmeat selling to andover?
I fear that they will make their posting policies consistent among their various forums. If they do, I hope they follow the /. model than the FM one. I never visit the FM forums since they don't allow anonymous participation (except by those who've taken the trouble to get a bogus e-mail address). There is so much more one can say if one doesn't fear repercussions. I have no problem with moderators using their judgement in enforcing good decorum.
I was wondering the other day who owns freshmeat and how they managed to get by without banner ads. I just assumed they had some really cool owner who cared about the site and its viewer and didnt like banner ads. But now they have been bought out by andover i guess banner ads will pop up any hour, there on all there other sites. I wish i knew what andover were really after.
Q: What is "packet loss (%)"?
A: Packet Loss measures the reliability of a connection. A known chunk of data is sent to the router and then the router is supposed to send the same data back unaltered (echo). If the packet returns intact then there was 0% packet loss and that is good. If the packet returns with half of its data garbled or missing then that is 50% packet loss, which is poor. 100% packet loss means the packet never returned.
That's what % packet loss means now? Would you trust someone who made such a statement?
Whoop! And now yuur pastey leetle white ass is owned by honkey dowt kohm? Man, You totally DID fuck up the biggest time. The important thing to remember is that before Slashmeat, we didn't care. Ergo... You've got a PReptile but you've not got a Furry? This picture, wrong, very wrong. Jerky, to be frank. Aynother ego. (b!!g sh0Ut to tr@derz@What'sthepoint)
Freshmeat has a lot of crap on it - for example "LSd", the featureless "find"-replacement. What a joke. I can't believe some of the shit people release in the name of opensource - it's embarassing. Linux has gotten a lot more popular and attracted a lot of clueless people. It used to be people wanted to work with an OS that was cool... Now they just want others to think they're cool for working with that OS. Go FreeBSD!
Yeah, Slashdot is really a piece of work. This software is so advanced, it boggles the mind... what a genius!!!
I use various versions of Netscape on Linux and news.Freshmeat.net consistently crashes netscape when the items appear. I don't know why but it seems to happen whenever I visit another web site first and THEN freshmeat. Anyone else have this problem?
Let's just be glad you-know-who isn't acquiring all these websites..
This may be a bit off topic, but I've enjoyed seeing how the advertisments have changed. They've gone to smallish, start-up isp's to cobalt server-ware, to that sony-dog-thing. Just thought it's been a cool thing to watch. Remember when /. didn't have comments? Good work Rob. When you go public, I'm buying stock ;)
fict.
------------------
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Anybody have any idea why Freshmeat is .net? It doesn't appear to be a network provider, and as far as I know, it never has been a network provider. I can excuse slashdot's .org, since it was a non-profit entity when the domain name was picked (and slashdot.com was already taken by the time the site whent commercial), but i see absolutely no reason why freshmeat should be .net.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Last dozen times I tried to access frehsmeat's ftp server I discovered that it wasn't even running...I don't know why this is, but it's kind of annoying to try to get a file (either from freshmeat or filewatcher) and then discover that said file is on the (non-running) freshmeat ftp server.
Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?
What is your Slash Rating?
Disclaimer: I work at Andover.Net.
That won't happen. We built LDC (Linux.DaveCentral)
to be different than any other Linux software
archive -- basically the category scheme and
content is different. We consider Freshmeat to
be for experienced Linux people and LDC is geared
toward Linux newbies so it is to everyone's
advantage that they be maintained separately.
Disclaimer: I work at Andover.Net.
Even if Microsoft tried to buy us (which is very
unlikely) Rob and scoop still by contract have
total creative control over their respective sites
and always have last say on what gets posted there.
Right now upper management here understands that
it's in Andover's best interests to let Rob and scoop maintain
their sites because whatever they're doing they're
doing it right because the IT crowd is coming here
in droves.
Disclaimer: You know...
I've stressed that to upper managers many times
here at Andover, and I think they're listening.
Slashdot and Freshmeat happen to be the two
favorite sites of the geeks working here so we
will be the first to cry loudly if our suits have
any funny ideas about either site.
Disclaimer: I work at Andover.Net (..and getting
/. as
tired of typing that)
Yes, Freshmeat will have one ad banner like
far as I know. Don't know what will happen to
existing mirrors -- right now we're indifferent
about mirrors. Our first priority is setting up
scoop on a rack of servers that can handle more
traffic.
Basically our attitude toward Freshmeat is the
same as Slashdot: let the existing site managers
do whatever they want and we feed them as much
hardware and bandwidth as they need to do it.
People see the control that is exerted over .edu, .gov, and .mil, and they assume that same control exists over the other 3 (.com, .org, .net). But it doesn't. You can register a domain using any of the three that you want and no one "checks your papers". Sure, the intent was that .net was for network providers, but without policing, it's just an intention. Freshmeat can be .net, simply because they want to. You might not agree, but that's the way it is.
Later, Freshmeat. You were a good companion.
I'm happy to give free consultancy, which is why I post to usenet and mailing lists.
/. is part of that.
/. posters get a % dividend of Andover's profits please? After all, it's us who (in large part) make it popular?
But, it just occured to me that Andover.net is a profit making entity - and
So, the comments I make (assuming they are interesting) attract people to slashdot, make slashdot more valuable, and generally line the pockets of andover.net
And I don't much like that. Can all
But remember, Andover.net, that all the comments are still copyright 1999 "the poster".... I'm waiting for that very small print at the bottom to change one day...
-----
Andover.net are a very small company (35 people). They have had three rounds of investment from various VC companies, so it is very likely that these VC companies have between them a majority share of the company.
And I QUOTE:
"Bruce Twickler, President of Andover, noted, "The acquisition, repurposing and commercialization of content is an extraordinary opportunity for growth. Our proprietary database-driven site creation tools, data collection tools, web tracking and reporting systems, and other technologies allow us to get to a breakeven point on a new site quickly.""
Now, how Open Source friendly does that sound.
Advertisers on andover net publications have included:
Microsoft
ZD Net
read more here:
http://www2.mtdc.com/mtdc/press004.html
-----
In a sudden move, Andover.Net bought Microsoft, this afternoon. When asked about the deal, William (Pentium) Gates III said that it would ensure Windows 2000 got prominent placement on Freshmeat, and a review on Slashdot. When it was pointed out to the Chairman of Microsoft that nobody who read either service was likely to buy Windows 2000, he answered that he was aware of this. He just wanted to see computer geeks throw up over their keyboards.
Andover.Net declined to be interviewed, but issued a press statement that it would solve the energy crisis, should the Y2K bug shut down the national grid. By putting Scoop, CmdrTaco and Bill Gates in the same room, they expect a matter/antimatter reaction to be initiated, providing power to the US for the next century.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The original announcement of the Slashdot buyout gives some explanation and mentions that Rob got a seat on the board of Andover. He also says "Most of what we're getting is a piece of Andover.Net." so I assume that means part ownership. While they may or may not have gotten the ultimate value for their site, it does not seem that they got screwed. And a contract gauranteeing creative control is worth quite a bit of money IMHO.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Congratulations to both parties! It's always good to see people getting paid and supported for solid open-source community work.
Beer recipe: free! #SourceCold pints: $2 #Product
There was a really good article in USAToday (editorial section) about how the 'internet revolution' is over since the people who wrote the code before did it for the code and for the excitement rather than the money. I personally also feel slashdot is slipping; I know I only visit two-three times a week now, only find 1 or two articles of interest, and the folks I work with and talk with, who used to visit often, now rarely visit.
Of course, that's hardly a scientific survey nor proves any correlation between quality and acquisition by any sort of Borg, but hey... things have changed. No matter what Andover or Slashdot can say it's different when you're no longer the owner. I know how it is -- I was approached with a similar offer on something else and turned it down -- I didn't want to sell out (not saying the slashdot crew did, but, everyone is entitled to their opinion).
OK.... So whens the IPO
:-)
https://www.mav.net/teddyr/syousif/
--
Time is on my side
Anytime you interact with a commercial entity generally you benefit, as well as they do. The end result of this may be money, both in Andover's case and in your own case. A lot of the services that you use lines somebodies pockets. Everytime you looked at one of slashdot's pages you generated money for slashdot and whomever controlled the advertising at the top.
It seems as though you're opposed to other's making a profit? Why? You are free to create a competing service and make it better then slashdot.
On a related note, do you notice how many people "love" the idea of a free OS? But hey, doesn't Linus make money due to the fact that Linux is popular? I want my share! I use Linux dammit! I use it a lot!
watch your ticker for RHAT
Awesome!
TV is certainly dead. Good TV is dead, then, bad TV is certainly alive.
I won't declare Good TV dead until Mr Rogers goes off the air. As long as he is alive, there will be an itty-bitty bit of "Good TV" left.
If you have "The Onion: Our Dumb Century" read the story on page 73 named "Tele-Vision Promises Mass Enrichment of Mankind".
OK, as the head of NewsTrolls, I've been watching this growing phenomena with interest. It seems painfully obvious that Andover.net is planning an IPO-- they are in their third round of financing now. So how do you get an IPO off the ground? You show your investors your unique users count. What if you don't have enough unique users? Well, you better go buy you some...and that's exactly what Andover did, which all things considered is a smart buisness move to make.
.uk and yes, NewsTrolls, link up together and create a meta-company that could have been IPO'd with percentage of company ownership based on eyeballs of each site...well, who knows?...maybe we can create something like that anyway...
But what would be interesting to know is: have Rob and Scoop been given percent of ownership in Andover? Options is fine for most employees, but if you are the guys who are actually bringing them the eyeballs that lets them tout big numbers, YOU should have partial ownership pre-IPO. If you don't, I'm saddened to say, I think you've been had.
Of course they're going to let you "do whatever you want" content-wise, they are reaping HUGE benefits when you think of the potential money to be made from an IPO...1 million?...that's chump change compared to $60 million or more raised in an IPO...
I also hope you have contracts that state you can walk from your relationship at any time.
What I would have liked to see is the sites like Slashdot, Freshmeat, HNN, HNS, Attrition.org, LinuxToday, OS Opinion, The Register
Best wishes to scoop and as always to Rob, but I REALLY hope you guys aren't being screwed...cause you're the ones with the gold...
--diva CEO NewsTrolls, Inc.
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
while freshmeat is my favorite s/w site, andover already has a linux s/w site (linux.davecentral.com) which has a different layout and feel entirely.
hope they don't try to munge the two together (esp re freshmeat, since I prefer that layout).
My interest in computer technology in general is longstanding (first computer: brand new Commodore VIC20), but it isn't going to be a career for me and I'm never going to be able to decide for myself if, for instance, Raster's code is as sloppy as some people say; or whether Debian's packaging system is more technically sound than RPM (though I do have a perverse attraction to dselect).
All the same, I enjoy the culture Slashdot sprang out of, and I've been enjoying it since before there was even a Linux, even if I sometimes think the media exposure has caused some affectation and posturing among its less secure members, and even if I'll never graduate from shell scripts and the occasional foray into Perl to reinvent some wheel I should have just handled better knowledge of vi.
My hope is that as the Open Source/Free Software/Linux wave crests, drawing more people to sites like this one and freshmeat, these places will continue to function as 'zines instead of publications, which is to say that I hope they'll continue to remain slightly inward turned, 'eyeballs,' hits, and 'Cool Site Awards' be damned.
There are plenty of other sites for people who aren't as passionate about this particular niche. If people like me can't keep up sometimes, well, some of us don't mind, and may even enjoy it.
Enough of my yakkin'. Congratulations are in order to Scoop, and belated congratulations to Rob et al.
----------
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
----------
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
Windows 98 DOES speed up the net.. Imagine if all those millions of 98 users were on the net surfing pr0n sites or doing 3 hour live updates instead of rebooting or trying to get DUN to work....
Just a thought..
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
How do I turn off this "Slashdot overload" shit?? It won't let me display more than 25 comments even though I have the limits set to 1000!
If Web sites like /. and freshmeat stop serving the community, and nobody else has the resources to take over the job, we can always fall back on netnews and email lists....
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
(. And now the freshmeat server is down. Do I see a connection? They are taking our speech away! Oups! .)
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Ummmm, rich?
Perhaps you should ask Cmdr Taco what color his Ferarri is?
I think a better term is 'fairly compensated'.
-jason
One could argue that the Internet matured in 1992, that it started dying in 1996, and that organs are failiure is now setting in.
I see a lot of people (ala Bob Metcalfe) predicting the death of the Internet, but I just don't see a lot of evidence to support it. The Internet is changing, but more and more people are still hooking up, more and more sites are still appearing. Sure, there are a lot of 'dead' sites out there, and people will come and go, but it looks like the Internet is still on its way to becoming as ubiquitous as television.
One could argue that television died a long time ago. Certainly most of the complaints about degredation in quality and increase in commercial interests that are often leveled against the Internet are true and then some against television. Yet television lives on. Is it alive or undead? Depends on your perspective, but television is a part of almost everyone's life, if even a small part. The Internet looks like it will become that way too. For some it may mean that the Internet will no longer be as large a part of their life as it has been, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
People who predict the demise of the Internet seem to miss one thing I think. If the Internet dies, what is going to replace it? Will people flock back to other, more traditional media? What new thing is coming out that could kill both the Internet and its predecessors? The advent of television hurt radio, but didn't kill it. The advent of the Internet has impacted television, but hasn't killed it.
Its easy to be a pundit, but not so easy to be a visionary.
I keep having these nightmares that Bill Gates is going to buy Andover.net and turn all the Linux sites in NT sites!
It could happen. But it would be a waste of Bill's money -- not that he cares about that. Worse than that it would be a waste of his time, which he does care about. If he tried it, all of the users would just jump ship to the new Linux sites that would spring up somewhere else.
I wonder what this means. Slashdot was certainly shaken up a bit at first, but now it seems to be back on track again (Roblimo is doing pretty well now!)
Currently Freshmeat has no source of income, right? They're quite a different animal from Slashdot. So I guess this means they'll start having banner ads, correct? And the mirroring by other companies would probably stop too, right? (I mean, it's one thing to do something out of the good of your heart for poor scoop, but what about for Andover?) Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Just wondering what their plans are for it, since it's quite different from Slashdot.
Er, I just got 503 from freshmeat.
Great start to the partnership
/usr/games/fortune > ~/.signature
Slashdot has not changed, it has just gotten larger. It is common to see post with more than 100 comments, no one has enough free time to read that many. Also the moderation and other improvements have changed the nature of the site - for better or worse.
I think these are growing pains, and it is unlikely the site will be as cosy as it once was.
BTW. Since slashdot is no longer non-commercial should it not change the TLD
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
And I was under the apparently misguided impression it was getting better!
:)
Seriously, I haven't noticed a difference in updates at all. The site features have only improved (moderation, comment thresholds, customization). Besides the fact it doesn't take forever and a day to get the whole front page to load anymore!
One gets the feeling you're quick to assume.
Congrats to scoop, glad to see his hard work paying off.
Freshmeat was a publicly supported site, Redhat helped and many other people helped. It had no commercial backend and really didn't require any funding.
I think its kind of sad that corporations are taking away the public support of "linux" and turning into corporate control. Thats pretty damn dissapointing
I like the donation model and support model better then the umbrella and buyout model.
One could argue that, but one would be wrong.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I'm just wondering...
If Andover.net has acquired Slashdot, and now Freshmeat, what does this mean? I don't think that this is good. Being able to support a site is good, but I don't think that one company controlling all these sites can be good.
Dammit, consolidation is bad! Erm...
Moo.
Isn't it strange that they have two of almost all their sites?
AndoverNews - Slashdot
DaveCentral Windows - Slaughterhouse
DaveCentral Linux - Freshmeat'
TechSightings - Slashdot
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Andover looks dumber and dumber everyday, and infact, more like Microsoft. "BUY THE COMPETITION!!!"
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
WTF? Ok I guess so .. Andover.net is cool :) Congrats Scoop. Now make 'the man' go buy you a big red truck or something. :)
/Brad
I'm really pleased that Andover.net keeps giving boosts to sites like this. Let's hope that Freshmeat will only enjoy a better success they have been thus far!
(First post!)
--ryan.
Don't say, "don't quote me," because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying.
I keep having these nightmares that Bill Gates is going to buy Andover.net and turn all the Linux sites in NT sites!
"Buy em out boys!" Bill Gates - The Simpsons
It's a little sad to see this happen, but it's inevitable. As linux (and the Internet, for that matter) mature, control of critical components will be wrested from the small fish and be given to the big fish.
How many marketroids are now reading slashdot looking for more such opportunities?
Okay, we all wanted linux to grow, and now we're unhappy to see newbies join the linux ranks??
/. was either a programmer or a sysadmin or some type of engineer. Nowadays, I'd bet that the percentage of slashdotters who can use gcc and gdb has decreased dramatically.
we can't have our cake and eat it too, you know... there was a time when just about everone on
We've gotten our noses out of joint because there are lots of people using linux who have different agendas, interests, and levels of knowledge.
The only options we have are:
1) tolearate a "dumbing down" of our favorite sites as the expand to serve a larger and larger community with large numbers of non-unix-gurus
2) ask site moderators to cater to a specific niche (like kernel developers, or hardcore computer geeks)
3) build a new niche site for insert-your-niche-here.
ROFL. nice going, BTW. as long as the sites' creative content remain with their owners most of us dont have a problem.
OK, when's Andover gonna buy out segfault.org?
They said the same thing about the novel back in the sixties, that it had died out too.
TV is certainly dead. Good TV is dead, then, bad TV is certainly alive.
Anyone who uses Lynx can tell you that Slashdot does a much better job of putting ALT="Whatever" in their image tags. This spoof had lots of "[IMAGE]" and "[INLINE]" which detracted from the effect a bit.
-- $SIGNATURE
.. of course now we will need some cartoons of scoop showing the sundry effects of wealth (and a recent birthday) on his formerly impeccable character.
--
In case one site fails miserably we have a spare.
John Casey
Gif Rotater
Andover.Net
hopefully that will take a load off your back scoop.
/.ers let the owners of these sites relish in their success....does customer service have to be 100% all of the time? they're only human :)
btw fellow
Sensei
Sensei
Linuxnewbie.org home of the NHF's
Do I do this for a reason, or just to be first?
Anyway, sounds like two of my fav sites under
the same umbrella. whee.
I think Andover.net is secretly headed by none other than Microsoft. They innocently buy up every popular pro-linux site, and then one day.. wham! all sites are automatically redirected to microsoft.com
Or I know, Slashdot is the one who really owns andover instead, and that Rob is slowly forcing them all to use the buggy slash code, so then he can have backdoor access to hundreds of websites, to try and take over the world!
You guys got any other conspiracy theories?
Be sure to read all the side stuff too, there are a lot of jokes in this one! It's like a bizarro-slashdot.
maybe now we can get software rankings/user postings on freshmeat :)
Can your IM do this?
P.S. don't fsck it up.
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
Lets hope that the Borg Collective does not eat up our nice little site.