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Sonatype names former Zend exec Mark de Visser as CEO


By Alex Handy
November 12, 2008 — 
When Sonatype first arrived on the scene earlier this year, Jason van Zyl was hoping to build a new ecosystem of tools and products around Maven, the open-source build management system he created.

Now that van Zyl's company is in full swing and offering enterprise tools like Nexus and NMaven, van Zyl wanted to concentrate on the code. For this reason, the company today announced the appointment of its new CEO, Mark de Visser.

De Visser was last employed as chief marketing officer at Zend Technologies, the company behind PHP. His strategy for growing open-source projects is to improve the product quality and the community.

De Visser related a story from a recent trade show, where a corporate developer asked a panel of speakers how to increase interest in his open-source project. The reply, which de Visser agreed with, was, “Make your project better.”

Sonatype's new CEO is confident that good software spawns good communities and that the group around Maven is solid.

“It is a large, active and vibrant community,” said de Visser of the Maven world. “There's nothing Sonatype has to do to make people use Maven. Lots of people who use PHP didn't know Zend. It was an ecosystem all its own. Open-source projects have this self-amplifying effect. Why sell on eBay? Because that's where the buyers are. Why buy on eBay? Because that's where the sellers are."

The Maven road map, despite de Visser's arrival at the company in October, remains unchanged. Van Zyl will remain the company's CTO, and he will continue to oversee the development of open-source tools and their more complicated, enterprise-focused commercial versions. This includes Nexus, a repository management and control system that can bring the many Maven repositories used by large organizations down to a single management console. NMaven, which brings Maven-like management to .NET environments, and a new tie-in for Flex applications are also under development.

Perhaps the most quickly evolving of these new tools is Nexus. De Visser hinted that Nexus would be evolving every six weeks for the next year. On the road map for this tool were legal compliance and an expansion of the p2 system, which will also bring further OSGi compatibility to the platform.

De Visser said that he's excited to work with the new company and with Maven's creator, van Zyl. “Jason has a keen ability to attract major talent. People like working with him,” said de Visser. "Now that I'm here, he's happy to stay away from all the day-to-day business work.”


Related Search Term(s): Maven, open source, Sonatype


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