The Ars Digita story is a classic example of what Cringely is talking about- a company run into the ground by "professional" managers brought in by the VCs. Here's the story, as told by one of the company's founders:
Even though it's "just one side of the story," the consensus is that it's pretty close to what really happened.
In the end, the VCs cut a deal with Redhat, who hired a few of Ars' staff to make it look like the company was successfully sold. Fortunately, Ars' great products live on as open source software, OpenACS [openacs.org], and Redhat's CCM [arsdigita.com]. Though Ars' incompetent management pushed CCM as the next, great version of their software, it was never more than vaporware. Redhat has continued to develop it, but it's still not finished.
...contrary to Eve's delusional rant, the company wouldn't have survived... AD was riding the dotcom boom, pure and simple -- even before the company took VC funding, it was heavily dependent on VC dollars that had been put into other companies that were its clients.
I don't know how you can claim to know this. It's pure conjecture. We have no way of knowing what other clients AD might or might not have had. Besides, last time I looked, Siemens was still around.
OpenACS is based on a version of the TCL ACS that was developed *after* Philip had been mostly kicked out, and that clearly violates several of the software design principles he preached. It's also not such a great product, though it's certainly better than the old ACS 3.x that was built on Philip's watch.
The only real difference between ACS and OpenACS is that the original ACS runs on top of Oracle, while OpenACS runs with Postgres. It's simply a port to a free, open source database. There's no other difference. I use/build/maintain both systems every day. The new OpenACS 4.x is a natural progression of ACS/TCL. The main difference between 4.x and 3.x is that 4.x is modular, with a package manager to add/remove modules. This required a bit of rewriting, but it's still basically the same thing.
As far as violating Greenspun's principles is concerned, I have no idea what you're referring to. But who cares whether some nebbish thinks a product strays from his own vision of the "one true path," as long as it works for the people who are using it. ACS/OpenACS is still as good as it ever was, for all the same reasons.
CCM is alive and well. The division of Redhat that consists of former AD people is profitable, and client sites are being delivered using CCM. Maybe it isn't "finished", but only in the sense that no software product is ever truly "finished".
Client sites have indeed been built using Redhat's CCM (a Java rewrite of ACS/TCL), but the software hasn't been republished, so the changes have not made it back to the original toolkit. The current release is still missing a lot compared to the TCL versions, and is nowhere near as well tested. Until whoever is building with CCM republishes with their additions, you're on your own developing with it. Plus, you need Oracle to run it.
Promptness is its own reward, if one lives by the clock instead of the sword.
Ars Digita a classic example of Cringley's point (Score:3, Interesting)
http://eveander.com/arsdigita-history [eveander.com]
Even though it's "just one side of the story," the consensus is that it's pretty close to what really happened.
In the end, the VCs cut a deal with Redhat, who hired a few of Ars' staff to make it look like the company was successfully sold. Fortunately, Ars' great products live on as open source software, OpenACS [openacs.org], and Redhat's CCM [arsdigita.com]. Though Ars' incompetent management pushed CCM as the next, great version of their software, it was never more than vaporware. Redhat has continued to develop it, but it's still not finished.
Re:Ars Digita a classic example of Cringley's poin (Score:2)
I don't know how you can claim to know this. It's pure conjecture. We have no way of knowing what other clients AD might or might not have had. Besides, last time I looked, Siemens was still around.
OpenACS is based on a version of the TCL ACS that was developed *after* Philip had been mostly kicked out, and that clearly violates several of the software design principles he preached. It's also not such a great product, though it's certainly better than the old ACS 3.x that was built on Philip's watch.
The only real difference between ACS and OpenACS is that the original ACS runs on top of Oracle, while OpenACS runs with Postgres. It's simply a port to a free, open source database. There's no other difference. I use/build/maintain both systems every day. The new OpenACS 4.x is a natural progression of ACS/TCL. The main difference between 4.x and 3.x is that 4.x is modular, with a package manager to add/remove modules. This required a bit of rewriting, but it's still basically the same thing.
As far as violating Greenspun's principles is concerned, I have no idea what you're referring to. But who cares whether some nebbish thinks a product strays from his own vision of the "one true path," as long as it works for the people who are using it. ACS/OpenACS is still as good as it ever was, for all the same reasons.
CCM is alive and well. The division of Redhat that consists of former AD people is profitable, and client sites are being delivered using CCM. Maybe it isn't "finished", but only in the sense that no software product is ever truly "finished".
Client sites have indeed been built using Redhat's CCM (a Java rewrite of ACS/TCL), but the software hasn't been republished, so the changes have not made it back to the original toolkit. The current release is still missing a lot compared to the TCL versions, and is nowhere near as well tested. Until whoever is building with CCM republishes with their additions, you're on your own developing with it. Plus, you need Oracle to run it.