In today’s article in CNNMoney.com entitled Is Slashdot the future of Media?, an idea was floated that Slashdot, and even VA Software, should be snapped up by another media company.
But it seems to me that any media company aiming to go deep into the modern world of user-generated media might want to think about buying this gem. Investment bankers, take heed.
Not only that, but whomever bought VA Software would be buying critical DNA — knowledge about what software the world is using. Sourceforge.net has essentially no competition, so effectively it has created a marketplace of producers and consumers.
Perhaps, my suggestion on January 3, 2006 in VA Software sells Animation Factory. Is there more to come? that VA Software divest of its media assets has been taken to heart and articles such as this are great ways to drum up interest. Or maybe VA Software itself is for sale and pushing its hottest media properties Slashdot and Sourceforge along with its affinity with Open Source, as the reason to buy the entire package.
Comments
Well, in his talk at SRA, available at http://www.wsw.com/webcast/sra2/lnux/, VA CEO Ali Jenab notes that a Slashdot site redesign or re-launch is coming by June.
It was a really interesting talk. He shared that VA is building some sort of “pipe” to like enterprise companies “discover” open source software on sourceforge.net. (Because doing a web search would be hard for them.) This new pipe would allow them to be compliant with open source licenses and return their internal changes to the open source people. (Even though no open source license requires internal changes to be shared.) Sounds like a great business idea!
But seriously, they’re also building some sort of “open source marketplace” on sourceforge. He specifically called out spikesource as a competitor for this. They hope to provide support for open source software this way.
He also says they’re “just about” to break even as a company. If you haven’t listend to the talk, you should.