By Michael Hall,
LinuxToday
Despite earlier reports intimating that Zelerate.com, a San Mateo,
Calif.-based provider of open source e-commerce applications, has
ceased operations, CEO Bonnie Crater says that simply isn’t the
case despite drastic reductions in staff.
Rumors first began circulating about the company’s demise late
yesterday afternoon, attracting the attention of press in part
because of the company’s relationship to idealab Capital Partners,
a prominent underwriter of numerous Internet companies. A report
released early this morning by The Register claimed the company was
suspending operations today while a skeleton crew staff finished
the process of shutting down for good.
Fuel was added to the speculative fire when Crater refused to
confirm or deny the rumors, waiting instead until this afternoon to
grant interviews discussing the situation in any detail. In an
interview with LinuxToday, however, Crater said that while there
have, indeed, been heavy layoffs, the remaining staff of five
employees will continue to do business, working on a new software
project she declined to discuss because it’s in early developmental
stages. Crater said Glen Ferber, a co-founder and Vice President of
Technology, will be heading up the new project.
Crater also laid to rest concerns about the status of the
existing codebase of Open Source, GPL’d software the company
maintains both on its own site and SourceForge, saying that the
company will continue to not only maintain the projects but remains
committed to Open Source software for its future projects:
“Open Source software,” said Crater, “is super customer-centric
and we’ll continue to maintain that code.”
Zelerate, founded in 1998, provides a suite of open-source,
WAP-enabled e-commerce applications it calls Zelerate AllCommerce.
The software is licensed under the GPL. Zelerate partnerships
include a strategic
alliance and referral agreement with Jabber.com, the commercial arm of the open
source instant messaging software.