Website operator and open-source development sponsor VA Software has decided to take on a new moniker-that of one of its best-known online destination, SourceForge. The change is effective immediately and is already active on the company's various online properties.
SourceForge Inc. began life as VA Research, later VA Linux Systems, and focused for much of the 1990s on hardware sales of Linux-based computer platforms. This was both a novelty for much of that period before Linux began receiving mainstream exposure, and a relatively high-value, specialist business as Linux distributions required more specialized expertise to implement. The company went public in 1999 with one of the most extreme valuations of the Internet bubble period, attaining share prices in hundreds of dollars before plummeting to earth.
In less than ten years as a public company, SourceForge is now on the third major iteration of its business model. In 1999 it was known first and foremost as a provider of Linux-based server hardware solutions, but by late 2000, particularly after the acquisition of Andover.net, began reorienting itself away from hardware and into software and Web-based solutions, renaming itself VA Software in the process as it divested its server business. The company traded away its software business to Collab.net last month and has been operating strictly as a Web property and e-commerce vendor since then. SourceForge.net is its leading property, a site which hosts countless open source collaboration and development projects. Linux.com and Slashdot.org are among its other destinations. The company has enjoyed off-and-on profitability since 2006.
