ActiveState Returns to Open Source Roots 89
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."
OS X on Intel? (Score:2, Interesting)
Can they make it so ActivePerl installs XS modules (Score:2, Interesting)
It the CamelPack [stennie.org] 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?
Re:i luv these guys, but they are doomed (Score:3, Interesting)
Combine with WinMacro, or another windows-native automator and you can make some very crazy creations that were never meant to exist.
Re:i luv these guys, but they are doomed (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:i luv these guys, but they are doomed (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [sourceforge.net], 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.
Hopefully something else... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:ActiveState considered worthless (Score:1, Interesting)
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
Re:Hopefully something else... (Score:3, Interesting)
If it was stable enough to run. I've tried to use eclipse-ruby for working on rails projects, and it regularly hangs on my Linux laptop.
If activestate ever opened up Komodo to the public, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
Re:Hopefully something else... (Score:3, Interesting)
I ended up buying a license of Komodo Personal for 30 bucks, and been happy ever since.
It covers all my installations for just 30 bucks, 3 versions included: Linux, Mac and Windows. I'm happy to pimp it.
Got it hung under windows a couple of times, and it takes quite a bit of memory - that are my only complaints. I'd recommend 512MB at least.