

ArsDigita: From Start-Up to Bust-Up - bane
http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/

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stevoski
There are various alternative accounts of ArsDigita's history on the web from
people who worked there. Here's one: <http://michael.yoon.org/arsdigita>

In a nutshell, Yoon claims that Philip Greenspun played a significant part in
his own company's downfall.

~~~
gaius
Great read, I had previously only seen Greenspun's, but a lot of it didn't
ring true, it's good to see some clarification.

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davi
1\. [2001]

2\. What he's up to these days: <http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/>

3\. One specific is helping with patent litigation (see comments at
[http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2011/08/16/anyone-
have-a-...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2011/08/16/anyone-have-a-copy-
of-arsdigita-community-system-from-prior-to-september-1999/))

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rwmj
The remnants of ArsDigita were acquired in the end by Red Hat. For a time the
(Java rewrite of) ACS was sold to a few places, but I don't think it is active
today.

I consulted on ACS/Java for about 6 months. It was a great example of the
Second System Effect. Incredibly over-engineered. Slow. Baroque. Obscure.

Wikipedia says of the Second System Effect "tendency [..] to have elephantine,
feature-laden monstrosities as their successors". Whoever wrote that must have
been thinking of ACS/Java.

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tedkalaw
I heard about these guys after seeing this site:

<http://aduni.org/>

Learned lots of useful things for my theory of computation class.

~~~
tomh
You might also enjoy my own account of ArsDigita University:

<http://aduni.org/~tomh/rants/aduni_five_years_later.html>

Nice to hear the ToC lectures are still being used 10 years later.

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yariang
For those interested, there's another account of the ArsDigita story via
interviews with Phillip Greenspun in Jessica Livington's Founders at Work.

