“First noted in this column a few weeks back, the “gated
community” definition is still a bit rough around the edges. At the
time, Collab.net president Bill Portelli used the notion of a
suburban gated community as a colorful way to describe his
company’s plans for grafting the open source, or community-based,
development model onto pre-existing proprietary software
projects.“
“A number of the companies working with us have expressed
interest in applying the open source model only with more
restrictive options, something similar to Sun’s (SUNW) Community
Source License with Java,” Portelli said. “We like to call it a
gated software community.”
“Given both the journalistic and hacker worlds’ penchant for
wordplay, it seems only natural that Portelli’s words would sprout
legs. Sure enough, when Andover.net-owned (ANDN) Slashdot
referenced the quote last weekend, asking readers what they thought
about “gated communities,” few respondees seemed mystified by the
reference or hostile to its undertones.”