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Programming IT Technology

SourceXChange Closes Doors 40

Posted by Hemos from the another-fallen-idea dept.
It's been coming in through the proverbial grapevine that SourceXChange has been closed by its' parent Collab.net. In the closed doors page they've got, Collab notes that they are focusing on a code development environment they've been working on - it's a lot like what SourceXChange was doing, but installing for people looking for collabrative development tools.
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SourceXChange Closes Doors More

SourceXChange Closes Doors

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  • Anywho [anywho.com] looks to me like it's still up.

  • An alternative (Score:4)

    by Tim Macinta ( 1052 ) <twm@alum.mit.edu> on Thursday April 05, 2001 @10:11AM (#312591) Homepage
    It's unfortunate to see SourceXChange close its doors. I tried their site out a few months ago when I was looking for a contract and the concept looked like something I would be interested in, but there were only about two projects listed at the time.

    A site with a similar idea is Cosource.com [cosource.com]. The projects there tend to be a lot smaller in scope, but there are a lot more to choose from. Hopefully they won't end up in the same boat as SourceXChange.

  • I wonder what, if anything, this will mean for GameXchange, the game project site that CollabNet built for Indrema.

    Nothing. There is no relationship between GameXchange and SourceXchange, except that the names are similar.

  • Same old story (Score:4)

    by Chris Siegler ( 3170 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @12:15PM (#312593)

    Great product, bad marketing. They had some 10 thousand developers signed up, open source and Linux all over the news, and a shortage of good programmers available to companies. All during a Tech boom that had companies scrambling for new ways to get work done. And yet they couldn't get enough projects.

    At the start they had some interesting projects posted by HP. But after that available projects slowed nearly to a stop. The ones that did show up were from smaller companies that offered too little money, and even those were slim pickings.

    It looks to me like they focused all their attention on the product and neglected the sales pitch to companies, who should have been eager participants. I don't think ``open source'' had anything to do with their failure.

  • What happens to the projects? (Score:3)

    by David E. Smith ( 4570 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @10:19AM (#312594)
    There are a number of projects out there that use collab.net software, or are "powered by collab.net" (whatever that means), or so on. What will become of them?

    The biggest one I can think of is OpenOffice [openoffice.org], which has a little tiny "powered by collab.net" logo at the bottom of the front page. Since this one's on Sun's bankroll (more or less) it'll likely continue, but what about the rest of 'em?

  • here is the content of the letter from Brian. As of March, 2001, SourceXchange has officially closed its virtual doors. While a unique idea and one that we feel really adhered more closely to the Open Source ideal than any other work-for-hire site ever did, it simply did not achieve the volume of business necessary to maintain the site and evolve the offering to meet the needs of sponsors and developers. Thank you to the hundreds of participants on our various projects, and to the sponsors who were willing to take a risk on a new model (and who, by and large, got good results). CollabNet is now focusing its full attention on its collaborative software development product called SourceCast. Happy Hacking! Brian
  • .. and they did not impress me. They are using open source technologies which some think are good, but it sounded like they were and ASP of sorts and they planned on making there money off of dot.coms. Well the dotcoms are we all know are not all doing so well so I think that has had to start hurting them. Needless to say I did not get a job with them nor did I want one after I interviewed. The guy was a jerk!

    I had the impression when I interviewed that they were barely getting bye. I think if they survive they will probably go through a few rounds of layoffs....

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • Good != Profit as Profit != Good (Score:4)

    by rakjr ( 18074 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @10:19AM (#312597)
    Just because something is good does not mean it will make a profit, just as something that makes a profit is not automatically good (other than the money it may produce). Redhat may be the popular distro to demonize because they have their eyes ont the money, but until we live in a society that automatically pays for "good ideas", the bottom dollar is the driving force.Microsoft and other big players have shown time and time again that lots of money will almost always win out over a great product which is not properly marketed. Think about the IBM PC Jr. I owned one. It was a one of IBM's biggest mistakes, but because of !! AWESOME !! marketting, what looked to be a dooming failure turned a profit. PcTools is an example who started out of the gates like lightening with great marketting strategy, but later got wiped off the face of the earth by Norton's better marketting and Microsoft's money.Linux and the free software environment have proven that you can not easily kill free software that is freely maintained, but the simple truth is it does cost people their time to develop and maintain the software.Personally, I think it is great that RedHat can help push Linux farther along while making money selling training and support (assuming the latest lawsuit does not wax the company). I liked what SourceXChange was trying to do, but you can't fund a business on likes. Remember, programmers have to eat too (even if it is mostly, pizza, mex, chineese, or something from a vending machine).
  • Perhaps my mind is just in the gutter, but upon glancing at the headline I could've sworn it said SexChange Closes Doors. Perhaps it's because there are two other sex related articles on the front page, but then again, maybe not.
  • Except every usage in the story IS correct.

    Note there are two uses:
    • The possesive, which you noted has not apostrophe. The story doesn't either when it uses this form.
    • The contraction, which does have an apostrophe. The story uses this form correctly as well.
  • What? The second usage of "its" (incorrectly written as "its'") should be possessive, and shouldn't have the dangling apostrophe.
  • Is my TShirt worth big bucks now?
  • Just happened to be at the right place at the right time. I expect that will be my first and last 'first post' on /. ever.

    WooHoo
  • The GTK port of XEmacs was funded through SourceXChange, I believe.

    Can anyone else think of something worthwhile that was funded through it?
  • Dood, i don't know what your talking about. Hushmail.com works fine!

  • I am the developer who won third place in the "Best Webapps Contest" [mycomponents.com]. While a lot of the winning entries didn't seem to be making much headway, my project was under active development [vineyardenterprise.com].

    I was to deliver 4 milestones to complete my project. The first was delivered in early December of last year and I have yet to receive the payment for this milestone yet. I was assured by John Egan of Collab.net as late as February 22, that I would be paid for it. I have a snowballs chance in hell of seeing that money now.

    Milestone 2 was scheduled to be released in two weeks after being integrated into the Jive [coolservlets.com] CVS repository.

    Milestone 3 is to begin this weekend when I travel to work with Bill and Matt of CoolServlets [coolservlets.com] to consult with them on the best way to include Moderation in the Jive codebase and integrate with existing Moderation code.

    I still plan to do Milestone 4.

    For those of you wondering what does the passing of SourceXchange mean for the Open Source world? Nothing. SourceXchange was more of a hinderance than a help to my project. They were supposed to supply every project (mine was #39) with a mailing list. The first time that I saw the SourceXchange mailing lists work was when Brian Behlendorf sent out the SourceXchange announcement that they were closing the doors.

    From the letter:
    Thank you to the hundreds of participants on our various projects, and to the sponsors who were willing to take a risk on a new model (and who, by and large, got good results).

    I certainly doubt that MyComponents.com [slashdot.org] feels that they got good results from SourceXchange. They got very little from the contest winners (myself included) and I am sure absolutely nothing that would benefit them as a business. If MyComponents made any payments to Collab.net, they should be asking for a refund.

    The only good thing to come out of the whole "Best Webapps Contest" was that it inspired the First place winner Rickard [fatbrain.com] Oberg [jboss.org] to write WebWork [sourceforge.net].

  • And now sourceXchange. I noticed a lot of my favorite sites going down. Anyone know what happened to hushmail? I would love to know what happened to my mail :(

  • Wow, there is some serious weirdness going on then. I can't connect (even telnetting to port 80) at all from my speakeasy DSL to anywho or hushmail, but from my school's server works fine. I've been using these without trouble for months. I wonder if they're blocking speakeasy?

    Thanks for telling me everything is ok.
  • I don't know if this means anything.

    Collab.net still might be doing well. They were an ApacheCon sponsor so that at least takes some $.

    However there were no collab.net employees (a lot are Apache developers) anywhere to be found. At least I didn't see any.

  • sad to see (Score:3)

    by iso ( 87585 ) <slash.warpzero@info> on Thursday April 05, 2001 @09:49AM (#312609) Homepage

    this is really unfortunate. i followed SourceXchange (and collab.net) pretty closely when i lived in San Francisco as i was good friends with employee number six. ;) it was a great idea, and it's a shame to see it go. i guess it just didn't generate the kind of noise it needed to, and didn't get the right people's attention.

    the SourceXchange concept was a good one, and i honestly think a lot of companies (and the open source community) could have really benefited from the service. it also could have really helped legitimize open-source software. i know there were other services like it (like the Free Software Bazaar), but i think SourceXchange was the most appealing to big companies.

    i wish Collab.net the best of luck with SourceCast, but while it looks like an interesting project, it really doesn't look like it will benefit open-source software nearly as much as SourceXchange could have. oh well, c'est la vie.

    - j

  • I'm curious—are there a lot of people out there who are interested in working on sponsored open source projects? I can't help feeling that this ought to be a good business model, and it is just that SourceXChange didn't get the marketing right.

    I know I [mailto] would be interested in hearing from people wanting to do this sort of thing.

  • It seems like everyone is blaming Collab.nets marketing for the failure of sourceXchange. I have been involved in two sXc projects, one as a developer, on as a peer reviewer. While the project I did as developer (RDBMS support for ArgoUML [argouml.org]) went quite well in terms of speed, the second, where I was peer reviewer, was never really completed. Both projects were sponsored by Collab.net, so this was actually some kind of marketing, producing more active projects. But unfortunetaly I was the only one who was pushing these projects, there was little feedback and pressure from Collab.net as organizer (sXc) or Collab.net as sponsor. So in the end it was me as peer reviewer who kept the second project alive, since the developer himself was quite frustrated not getting feedback.
    I really hoped that sXc would have been a success, and I am far from saying that it's all just Collab.nets fault, I admire them for their courage and power to try this. Please just don't say it's all just marketing failure, it would have needed more active developers and altogether a more active community.

  • 1. The correct spelling is "posessive".

    And I always thought the spelling is "possessive" ...

  • until we live in a society that automatically pays for "good ideas", the bottom dollar is the driving force.

    Or until we take economics out of the picture completely.

  • It's not 100% (what is), but overall, it's proven much more successful than the egalitarian version.

    Humans will eventually evolve to realize that taking the dollar out of the equation (and avoiding the mistakes of the USSR, Cuba, etc...there are mistakes on the other side too, the Shah of Iran, Nazi Germany, etc.) will allow us to get significantly closer to 100%.

  • So, just out of curiousity....how many gpl and open source ppl sent them $5 to help them stay open???

  • Re:What happens to the projects? (Score:5)

    by keri ( 120366 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @10:35AM (#312616)
    Nothing will happen to other Collab.Net projects. We're still out there working and succeeding in convincing alot of large organizations such as Sun, HP, Oracle, Motorola and Dresner that thinking in an open source way -- or at least a collaboarative development way -- is a the right way to go for their projects. We're still intimately involved with projects such as Openoffice.org, Netbeans.org, Openadaptor.org, OTNxchange.org and Possenet.org. And we haven't stepped back from our commitment to the open source world either, we're hosting CVSHOME.org, MozDev.org and developing new generation open source tools such as Subversion -- replacement for CVS and Scarab -- replacement to Bugzilla. We're many years from ending up on fuckedcompany -- and we'll be around to fight the good fight! Keri Carpenter Community Manager Employee #20 something Collab.Net
  • No, the one I mentioned DOES have a dangling apostrophe. The possisive is "its" not "its'" with the extra apostrophe because "its" is, by nature, already possesive. You add the apostrophe when you have a noun that needs to be possesive, and you put it after an 's' when that noun is plural. Neither hold here as "its" is already a non-noun word and possisive!

    Jesus, people, learn some English.
  • After reading the headlines earlier today about the sex business online, I read this as

    Source Sex Change.. yikes.
  • I strongly disagree. SourceXchange was one job site among many. SourceCast is something that is really unique and needed to take open source to the next level in terms of larger projects and corporate involvement. Sites like OpenOffice.org and Netbeans.org and OpenAdaptor.org and e-speak.net and MozDev.org all use SourceCast to bring their software to the people in a way that is better than any alternative.
  • For those interested in open-source game talks, check out http://stormbringer.sysconn.com/ or http://pcxl.n3.net/ for a new site that deals with opensource game news and development. -- Michael

  • Hey, if developers pf proprietary software want to use the same tools as developers of Open Source, that's fine with me.

    SourceCast sounds similar to VA's SourceForge OnSite. Occasionally Larry McVoy talks about starting a similar "BitForge" project, too.
  • 2 news stories down you say how online sub-cultures are booming, with open source being one of them. So uhh if it's booming why is sourcexchange closing down?
  • I wonder what, if anything, this will mean for GameXchange, the game project site that CollabNet built for Indrema.

    The big subject of Indrema's dev chat yesterday was what to do with IDN and GameXchange if Indrema goes under. (Which they will unless they get more funding. They said they should know by the end of the week.)
  • it'd be clearer if you wrote its' rather than "its'" though.

    . . .

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Sure, then you have Cuba, the USSR, etc... Those societies tried to take the dollar as the driving force. Not somewhere I want to be. By in large, the dollar does a fair job of driving good ideas. It's not 100% (what is), but overall, it's proven much more successful than the egalitarian version.

  • You've still got the source code.

    If it was a private firm with closed source code, you'd be having problems now.

    Even if it was for code grouping, it's still not as bad as writing code for a closed source application language and having them go out of business ....

  • I have a friend that was working for collab.net in SF. I was down there doing something at Alexa.com and he mentioned that evening that they were going to shut down sourcexchange - mostly to streamline the company to go IPO. He hired someone to help collab.net do that, but he got fired today by that same person - never mentioned that would happen - in fact he was looking forward to the next year.
  • Cosource and SourceXchange both opened within a few months (days?) of each other. Both had a lot of promise. I would visit each one every few months, but the jobs on SourceXchange were too big and the process on Cosource WAY too complicated ("authority"? "affiliate"? Huh?).

    This story reminded me to do my biannual check of Cosource and I find it just like I always do. And I mean that literally--the same projects are always just sitting there. Does anybody actually WORK on these things? I think that "FreeCiv to BeOS" thing has been there for two years or more.

    These websites were great ideas but they don't seem to be working. Too bad.
    --

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