activeCollab is a free, open source competitor to Basecamp, a very popular online project collaboration tool. It’s been getting good buzz & good steam, but I was bothered to read this on their blog a few days ago (edited):

There will be no 0.7.5 or any other major version in 0.x branch. Next major release is activeCollab 1.0 and it is scheduled for summer 2007. Code in 1.0 branch is not compatible with 0.x code so parallel development is not possible.

To keep the development process focused as possible there will be no public beta versions.

activeCollab 1.0 and future core development will be developed exclusively by company that [Ilija Studen, the activeCollab founder] started, and [the] community will be able to contribute by developing plugins, themes and translations.

Note that the above are exerpted from the full blog post. When asked about licensing, Ilija responded with

Can’t tell much about licensing, but we will most probably go with something used by profit oriented open source projects (MySQL, SugarCRM…) One thing is for sure – there will be a free and open source version that match current feature set so current users will not be let down when 1.0 gets launched.

Whole point of this transformation is to provide more value to users, not to drive them away. We are aware that some people will now like the idea of profit oriented open source project, but still being able to provide good support, dedicated development team and guaranty that we’ll be here next year is something that we find really important. Hope that most of the users agree with us on that.

So…hmm. To me it sounds like activeCollab is privatizing the project, disappearing for several months before the next release, and focusing more on profit. Not a good sign, really…I felt it had potential to move ahead, fueled by contributions from the community, but whether for money-seeking and/or project management reasons, that sounds like it’s going to change. It might work out well, but I could also see the project disappearing for months while the community waits patiently for summer 2007. The community asks about progress, but since the source & beta are closed, no one can monitor progress. The deadline slips to fall 2007, then winter 2007, and … well, could be bad.

Granted, I could be wrong .. I don’t know Ilija or the team he’s assembled, and 37 signals did very well with a small team & closed source when they built BaseCamp. Of course, one of activeCollab’s strengths (IMO) is that it’s not BaseCamp.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the activeCollab community forking off the source code on their own & keeping a separate open source version of activeCollab under a new name. It happens with wikis a lot, I know. 🙂

Edit: this thread in the activeCollab forums is worth reading if you want more background on Ilija’s motivation. It seems like Ilija wants to work on activeCollab, wants it to remain free, and wants it to be a successful product that’s still around 5 years from now. But, he wants to earn a living on it, and he feels like having a controlled (not open?) project with a small team (ideally in the same physical space) is the right way for him to achieve that. Not that there’s anything wrong with his goals & opinions, but I think the activeCollab community was definitely (IMO) caught off guard.