“And so began a series of projects. Most are open source, free
software. But in addition, Gordon and his company, theKompany.com,
are producing specialized development tools that, while typically
Linux-based, will work on multiple platforms and will be sold to
businesses.”
“This hybrid — producing open-source software, helping with
existing projects, and working on proprietary projects, too — is a
thin wire to walk, but Gordon says it’s working.”
“We’re trying to build something professional and not piss
people off,” he said in a recent interview from his California
headquarters. The first part of the plan was to round up the
available Linux development tools and offer a distribution aimed at
developers. The result was a product called PowerPlant.
“We essentially hit on an idea that we would go around and get
all these languages, IDEs, libraries, different tools for
developing applications on Linux, and put together what we’re
calling a second-tier distribution, though it’s actually
complementary to any RPM or DEB-based system. We ended up with
three CDs of our stuff and one CD of demo games from Loki. And
while the license has changed [MySQL recently went GPL], you still
get a full commercial license for MySQL with PowerPlant. There are
about 150 different types of applications. It’s like a Linux
distribution in the sense that we’re selling the convenience.” It
doesn’t include Linux itself, though. ‘We thought, why compete with
everybody? There really isn’t a reason to, since all we want to do
is make a distribution for developers.'”