In three separate announcements, VA Linux officially opened an online repository for open-source projects, cut a deal with an application service provider and added a new member to its executive staff.
Today's moves follow by less than a month the company's initial public offering, when share prices soared 698 percent beyond the opening price of $30 a share.
Keeping close to its roots, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based VA Linux set up SourceForge, a free online repository offering open-source developers' storage and communications resources. During seven weeks of testing, VA Linux claims growth of about 25 percent a week, with 3,000 developers from 76 countries signing up for the service.
SourceForge is hosting, at its launch, about 700 open-source projects, including: VA Linux's own Cluster Manager; Topaz, a next-generation version of the Perl programming language; and the Berlin Project, a graphical system for Linux and Unix.
Linux, a Unix variant developed in 1991 by then college student Linus Torvalds, is itself an open-source success story. Unlike commercial software, which typically is developed by companies that hold exclusive rights to the source code, open-source software is freely distributed and available, with many different developers contributing to its improvement.
One of the most publicly visible open-source projects is from Mozilla.org, which days before Christmas released a testing version of Web browser Netscape Communicator 5.
VA Linux is not restricting the SourceForge to Linux, with projects for BeOS, PalmOS, MacOS and Windows, among others, registered for the service.
"SourceForge represents a dramatic departure from the traditional practices of proprietary software vendors, empowering software developers and users to work together to create their own future," Larry M. Augustin, president and CEO of VA Linux, said in a prepared statement.
VA Linux today also announced a new customer, NetLedger, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based application service provider (ASPs) for accountants.
ASPs are companies that host software applications for customers, so that they don't have to buy and manage the software themselves. Customers typically access their applications over the Internet.
VA Linux will provide NetLedger with a Linux server farm, as it expands its services for small-business accounting. NetLedger in August introduced its first Web-based accounting applications, using the Oracle 8i database.
Robert Russo joined VA Linux today as general manager and executive vice president of worldwide operations. Russo, who will report to Augustin, previously worked in a similar capacity at Synopsys, a supplier of electronic design automation software. Before that, Russo was a manager for Cray Research.
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