By Beth Cox,
internetnews.com
Zelerate.com, a San Mateo,
Calif.-based provider of open source e-commerce applications,
reportedly is going under or is about to go under after laying off
about half of its staff last week.
CEO Bonnie Crater, reached at her office this morning by an
internetnews.com reporter, would neither confirm nor deny published
reports that the company is being shut down
However, TheRegister.com was reporting
on the layoffs and cited unnamed sources as saying that the company
– formerly called OpenSales Inc. – was shutting its doors
today.
Zelerate, which had funding from idealab Capital Partners,
idealab! itself and Sanchez Capital Partners, markets the Zelerate
AllCommerce suite of open source, WAP-enabled e-commerce
applications that provide a core set of modules to run businesses
of all sizes on the Internet.
Zelerate was founded in 1998 by Rob Ferber, formerly founding
vice president of technology at eToys, and Glenn Ferber (no
relation to Rob), who was previously chief interactive officer at
American Digital Media.
Just last January Zelerate struck
a strategic alliance and referral agreement with open source
instant messaging technology provider Jabber.com Inc., a subsidiary
of Webb Interactive Services Inc. That same month it released
AllCommerce 1.2, designed to work with the company’s
soon-to-be-released Zelerate Warehouse Management application for
real-time fulfillment.
Zelerate product offerings are released under the nonrestrictive
GNU Public License (GPL), which accelerates software development by
encouraging a worldwide community of developers to test, modify and
critique solutions.