Open Country announces beta site

Open Country.Net of Santa Clara recently announced that their web site www.opencountry.net is active, in beta stage, and they are eagerly seeking members of the open source community to test it out and give their feedback.Open Country is a community publisher, looking for home/small office users of Linux that have written programs that they might want to share with fellow users, while receiving rewards for their creation.

They also plan to include those who might be interested in writing, promoting or testing open source software. All efforts will be rewarded, and include free, un-biased software review by Open Country’s top “Geeks” (Linux Gurus).

Open Country was founded in 1998 by Paul Cubbage of Los Gatos. (Two new executives have been added to the team, with an announcment to come later this week.)

Long considered a “Unix Guru” in Silicon Valley, he has enlisted a talented team of “true believers” as he calls them. (Most work for deferred salaries, stock options or small stipends while awaiting funding.) Ever optimistic, Cubbage says, “We’ve several contingent funding offers, though, so all this sacrifice should be rewarded soon.” He was once the head of APX, the Atari Program Exchange which used a similar model, finding end users of Atari software that wanted to share their stuff with the world. A lot of former Atari programmers are now Linux “hackers”.

“Being rewarded with royalties, prizes and other incentives gives everyone a chance to be involved in the Open Source Movement,” said Cubbage, who is a big proponent of spreading the corporate wealth. “We also plan to give back to the community in a big way, once profitable (expected by 2002).”

For more information, or to submit a program or idea, please visit their site at Opencountry.Net or phone their headquarters in Silicon Valley at(408)248-8530. –Justine tenZeldam