KnowNow finally comes to its senses

I'm glad to see KnowNow re-embracing open source by releasing some of their application server technology. It appears to be the same code that wowed people almost two years ago at the first big KnowNow demo, and it's good to see the company get back to its roots. Back when I was a part of the company, I (and others on the web app team) sat in meeting after meeting in total disbelief as plans were made to abandon all developer relations, to stop being an open-source friendly outfit, and instead become an enterprise software corporation. Why they chose to abandon all the great buzz and community support they had in March of 2001 just to try turning a big buck (instead of free code, price tags in the tens of thousands were stuck to everything) on unproven software should be a lesson for MBA courses everywhere. Market buzz is about the best momentum you can have in a new startup, and doing everything you can to kill it is giving yourself the kiss of death.

Mark my works, once someone ports the code to an apache module you'll start seeing some wicked-cool applications using it. Heck, I'd finally make the switch to apache just to use it on MetaFilter (real-time message counts/comment output/instant messaging).