My buddy Zack Rosen over at CivicSpace Labs has announced an alpha testing period for hosted CivicSpace sites, along the lines of WordPress.com or Bryght. Back when I worked there, this was something that we spent much time discussing, and I’m thrilled to see this available:
Yes, that’s right, we are going to begin alpha testing a hosted CivicSpace service shortly. To say this has been a long time coming is quite the understatement. Three years, 30+ major software releases, thousands of sites, and the shared vision of thousands of supporters have gotten us to where we are today and have (hopefully) prepared us for this next giant leap forward.
The service will be similiar to Drupal hosting offered by Bryght but will provide the CivicSpace 0.8.3 Drupal distribution. In the future we hope to launch the ASP publicly as a low cost service for the non-profit & advocacy sector, but for now we are looking for a few brave CivicSpace community members to help us test it. Please fill out the form if you are interested in participating and we will be in contact with you shortly.
Factory Joe 
Interesting development. Seems a natural way to get money.
Chris, any idea what “30+ major software releases” means? I can’t fathom what that means in a three year period?
Yeah, basically this will be the business model for CivicSpace, Inc.
Not sure about “30 major releases” either — except that maybe each minor point release was a major undertaking! 😉
The meaning of “major” I guess it is relative. Since we started DeanSpace and transitioned it to CivicSpace we made incremental releases every month or so (some times more often). Some releases were more work than others but in general each took quite a bit of effort. It’s hard to draw comparisons between the CS release cycles and that of more “normal” supported software releases.
Regardless of release cycles, sounds like spin to me. It definitely is relateive. I think most would agree that major release suggests a release that includes a number of specific significant improvments. Even if done incrimentally, major would be the culmination. How many major releases did Drupal have in this time?
Congratulations CivicSpace for the accomplishments to date. Best of luck CivicSpace! Stay true to your roots.
Lloyd, you’re such a literalist. Heh. Lighten up, they work hard too! 😉