ArsDigita
Encyclopedia
ArsDigita was a web development company cofounded by Philip Greenspun
, Tracy Adams, Ben Adida, Eve Andersson, Olin Shivers, Aure Prochazka, and Jin Choi and was started in Cambridge, Massachusetts
in the mid-1990s. The company produced a popular Open Source
toolkit, the ArsDigita Community System
(ACS), for building database-backed community websites, and flourished at the peak of the Internet bubble. ACS was also the roots of OpenACS
, which added PostgreSQL
as a database option and gave the system a fully open-source stack.
The founders of the ArsDigita Corporation also set up a nonprofit organization, the ArsDigita Foundation, which sponsored a yearly programming contest for high school students and, in 2000, a free physical school
teaching an intensive one-year course in undergraduate computer science.
Recruiting was touted heavily by Greenspun, and Ars Digita became notorious among the "elite geeks" as a place where recruiting could result in significant payoffs. During the spring of 1999, for example, recruiting 5 hires would earn the employee a Honda S2000
. Recruiting 10 employees would net a Ferrari F355
. A trophy F355
in bright yellow was kept parked outside of the Prospect Street office in Cambridge to entice employees into recruiting. Later in the summer of 1999, as new management was brought on board, the policy was quietly changed to a lease of the cars, not outright ownership.
Recruiting was performed nationally, with four tiers of hiring, ranging in salary from $80,000 to $150,000 annually. Potential recruits were required to submit solutions to a handful of problems sets used in an Internet application development course at MIT. Some of these problem sets required the use of the Oracle object-relational database management system
behind Web pages. Others were basic computer science
problems such as computing a Fibbonaci Series recursively
using the Tcl
programming language.
Approximately 180 Ars Digita employees were hired at the company's peak, but with the crash of the dot com economy, many of ArsDigita's clients went out of business. Others cut back heavily on their technology initiatives. The weight of payroll and offices in Cambridge
, Berkeley, California
, Washington D.C., and Ann Arbor, Michigan
soon overwhelmed the company. The Ann Arbor office was closed in September, 2000, with the other offices following over the next few months.
Employees at Ars Digita were treated incredibly well. The Cambridge office, for example, had a fully stocked kitchen on each floor, and a full game room with a pinball machine. Each employee desk was outfitted with an Aeron chair
, two Sun Microsystems
17" Flat Panel Monitors, and a VOIP telephone.
ArsDigita took $38 million in venture capital
investment from Greylock
and General Atlantic
in 2000 to provide working capital for expansion of its product line. Greenspun claims that the venture capitalists staged an internal coup to drive the founders out of the management structure and installed incompetent professional managers with little idea of how to run a technical company, resulting in the collapse of the company http://www.waxy.org/random/arsdigita/ and a lawsuit between the founding shareholders and the venture capitalists over control of management. The lawsuit was settled out of court on undisclosed terms.
In 2002, ArsDigita's main assets were acquired by Red Hat
, including the pinball machine.
ArsDigita is unrelated to Ars Technica
, despite the similarity in name.
Philip Greenspun
Philip Greenspun is a semi-retired American computer scientist, educator, and early Internet entrepreneur who was a pioneer in developing online communities.-Biography:...
, Tracy Adams, Ben Adida, Eve Andersson, Olin Shivers, Aure Prochazka, and Jin Choi and was started in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
in the mid-1990s. The company produced a popular Open Source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
toolkit, the ArsDigita Community System
ArsDigita Community System
The ArsDigita Community System was an advanced Open Source toolkit for developing community web applications developed primarily by developers associated with ArsDigita Corporation...
(ACS), for building database-backed community websites, and flourished at the peak of the Internet bubble. ACS was also the roots of OpenACS
OpenACS
The Open Architecture Community System is an open-source web application framework licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL.The Open Architecture Community System provides:...
, which added PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
as a database option and gave the system a fully open-source stack.
The founders of the ArsDigita Corporation also set up a nonprofit organization, the ArsDigita Foundation, which sponsored a yearly programming contest for high school students and, in 2000, a free physical school
ArsDigita University
ArsDigita University was a one-year, intensive post-baccalaureate program in Computer Science based on the undergraduate course of study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . It was financed and supported by the ArsDigita Foundation, a non-profit organization begun by ArsDigita Corporation...
teaching an intensive one-year course in undergraduate computer science.
Recruiting was touted heavily by Greenspun, and Ars Digita became notorious among the "elite geeks" as a place where recruiting could result in significant payoffs. During the spring of 1999, for example, recruiting 5 hires would earn the employee a Honda S2000
Honda S2000
The Honda S2000 is a roadster that was manufactured by the Japanese automaker Honda Motor Company. It was launched in April 1999 and was created to celebrate the company's 50th anniversary. The car was first shown as a concept at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1995, following which it was launched in...
. Recruiting 10 employees would net a Ferrari F355
Ferrari F355
The Ferrari F355 is a sports car built by Ferrari from May 1994 to 1999. It is an evolution of the Ferrari 348 and was replaced by the Ferrari 360. It is a mid-engined, rear wheel drive V8-powered 2-seat coupe...
. A trophy F355
Ferrari F355
The Ferrari F355 is a sports car built by Ferrari from May 1994 to 1999. It is an evolution of the Ferrari 348 and was replaced by the Ferrari 360. It is a mid-engined, rear wheel drive V8-powered 2-seat coupe...
in bright yellow was kept parked outside of the Prospect Street office in Cambridge to entice employees into recruiting. Later in the summer of 1999, as new management was brought on board, the policy was quietly changed to a lease of the cars, not outright ownership.
Recruiting was performed nationally, with four tiers of hiring, ranging in salary from $80,000 to $150,000 annually. Potential recruits were required to submit solutions to a handful of problems sets used in an Internet application development course at MIT. Some of these problem sets required the use of the Oracle object-relational database management system
Oracle database
The Oracle Database is an object-relational database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation....
behind Web pages. Others were basic computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
problems such as computing a Fibbonaci Series recursively
Recursion
Recursion is the process of repeating items in a self-similar way. For instance, when the surfaces of two mirrors are exactly parallel with each other the nested images that occur are a form of infinite recursion. The term has a variety of meanings specific to a variety of disciplines ranging from...
using the Tcl
Tcl
Tcl is a scripting language created by John Ousterhout. Originally "born out of frustration", according to the author, with programmers devising their own languages intended to be embedded into applications, Tcl gained acceptance on its own...
programming language.
Approximately 180 Ars Digita employees were hired at the company's peak, but with the crash of the dot com economy, many of ArsDigita's clients went out of business. Others cut back heavily on their technology initiatives. The weight of payroll and offices in Cambridge
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, Washington D.C., and Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2010 census places the population at 113,934, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 344,791 as of 2010...
soon overwhelmed the company. The Ann Arbor office was closed in September, 2000, with the other offices following over the next few months.
Employees at Ars Digita were treated incredibly well. The Cambridge office, for example, had a fully stocked kitchen on each floor, and a full game room with a pinball machine. Each employee desk was outfitted with an Aeron chair
Aeron chair
The Aeron chair is a Herman Miller product designed in 1994 by Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf. It is an ergonomic chair regarded by many users as inherently very comfortable due to its wide range of fit and adjustability. Its novel design has gained it a spot in the Museum of Modern Art's permanent...
, two Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
17" Flat Panel Monitors, and a VOIP telephone.
ArsDigita took $38 million in venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
investment from Greylock
Greylock
Greylock Partners is one of the oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1965, with committed capital of over $2 billion under management. The firm focuses on early stage companies in the consumer, enterprise software and infrastructure as well as semiconductor sectors.Today, Greylock operates out...
and General Atlantic
General Atlantic
General Atlantic is a private equity investment firm. The firm invests through growth capital injections, control buyouts, industry consolidations, build-ups, recapitalizations, and PIPEs...
in 2000 to provide working capital for expansion of its product line. Greenspun claims that the venture capitalists staged an internal coup to drive the founders out of the management structure and installed incompetent professional managers with little idea of how to run a technical company, resulting in the collapse of the company http://www.waxy.org/random/arsdigita/ and a lawsuit between the founding shareholders and the venture capitalists over control of management. The lawsuit was settled out of court on undisclosed terms.
In 2002, ArsDigita's main assets were acquired by Red Hat
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....
, including the pinball machine.
ArsDigita is unrelated to Ars Technica
Ars Technica
Ars Technica is a technology news and information website created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games. Ars Technica is known for its features, long articles that go...
, despite the similarity in name.