A small number of free software developers recently got a letter from Freshmeat/Andover.net promising cash payments of approximately $1000/month for moving their projects to being hosted on Andover's new Server 51.
A small number of free software developers recently got a letter from Freshmeat/Andover.net promising cash payments of approximately $1000/month for moving their projects to being hosted on Andover's new Server 51.
Apparently Andover is trying to get into the same business that SourceForge, hosted by VA Linux, now dominates. The letter says that server 51 will go into alpha on Jan 15, and will initially host 20 projects. It's unclear whether the cash bonuses are part of a general plan to reward free software developers, or whether it's just part of the launch phase.
In any case, this is yet another interesting potential source of funding for developers. Maybe free software authors will become like racecar drivers or other athletes - companies will compete for the honor of sponsoring them.
Any other details are, of course, welcome.
This is slightly off-topic, but a colleague of mine translated some of the test comments for me (my knowledge of German is limited), and it looks like the author of these nice comments has been in the army recently. I also discovered that BabelFish's dictionary does not seem to contain some words that are not politically correct...
I wonder if they will delete these comments before announcing the new service.
If somebody was going to give me 1k$ a month for having my project at their server I wouldn't hesitate long... but, does this come with some fine print, eg. not having a mirror anywhere ?
It stretches credibility to believe that the VA acquisition of Andover wasn't in progress before Server 51 started up. Do you suppose VA will phase out or merge Server 51 with Sourceforge as part of the acquisition? Not much point in competing with yourself....
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