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 Description

[Real World Stuff]

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.

Q&A from ActiveState

[MarkChovain]

ActiveState have put a Q&A [activestate.com] on their website. It has lots of pretty good info, with a little bit of PR thrown in for good measure.

Re:hmm...

[MarkChovain]

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_).

perl/php/python/tcl/ruby on intel OS X

[egarland]

They are talking about ports of ActiveState's perl/php/python/tcl/ruby on intel OS X.

Re:What about Komodo?

[davidascher]

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

David Ascher, ActiveState

Re:Root 21?

[flwombat]

The drinking age in the U.S.A. is 21; it's the same for all alcoholic drinks. This is the highest drinking age in the world, at least according to this google result [potsdam.edu].

Don't forget, we had full national prohibition of alcohol less than 100 years ago. There are still a number of dry counties in various states; that is, parts of states where alcohol sale (not possession, I believe) is prohibited. These counties tend to have drive-thru liquor stores just outside their borders.

Re:i luv these guys, but they are doomed

[flwombat]

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.

Re:i luv these guys, but they are doomed

[barcodez]

I tend to use Cygwin [cygwin.com]'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?

Re:i luv these guys, but they are doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

You are obviously speaking from a blank mind. Check out the mailing lists and you will see a very much alive (Active)Perl community.

Re:i luv these guys, but they are doomed

[LLuthor]

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).

Re:i luv these guys, but they are doomed

[Keichann]

*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?

Re:perl/php/python/tcl/ruby on intel OS X

[Phroggy]

Note that Mac OS X already includes all of these languages (as well as C, C++, Objective C, Java, and probably a couple others) - just not ActiveState's versions.

Re:i luv these guys, but they are doomed

[stuntpope]

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.

Re:i luv these guys, but they are doomed

[RazzleDazzle]

Apparently that is not going to happen [slashdot.org], according to an ActiveState employee post on Slashdot.

Re:What about Komodo?

[rtos]

Unfortunately the Komodo [activestate.com] IDE won't be open sources (free as in beer) any time soon.

But honestly, that's ok with me. It's only $30 for the personal license, and they license per developer not per seat/cpu... so you are welcome to install it on as many machines as you use (e.g. desktop and laptop).

I do quite a bit of Python coding, and after checking out Eclipse [eclipse.org], SPE [stani.be], and a few others, I'm still a huge fan of Komodo. I've easily gotten $30 of value out of using it.

Plus, if you watch the bargain sites carefully, they occasionally run promotions where you can get Komodo for free [thinkhole.org]. :)

That said, YMMV. I know a lot of people who would disagree with me and would rather use Eclipse with PyDev [sourceforge.net].

Re:Value

[smallpaul]

"Pender Financial Group Corporation (TSX-V: PDF) announced on January 30, 2006 that it has entered into an agreement with Sophos, Inc., a subsidiary of Sophos Plc, to acquire the business, assets and liabilities of the ActiveState division of Sophos, Inc. for the purchase price of US $2.25 million."

In other words, Sophos valued the anti-spam stuff at more than $20 Million.