Salesforce acquires Dimdim for $31 million

Enterprise cloud computing specialist Salesforce has announced that it has acquired Dimdim, the company behind the open source Dimdim web conferencing software, for $31 million in cash. Salesforce says that the acquisition will extend its Chatter collaboration platform, adding "critical real-time communication technologies".

Dimdim previously came under heavy criticism as it hadn't contributed to the the GPL licensed Open Source community edition of Dimdim since December of 2008, version 4.5 – Dimdim Pro 5.0, for example, was released in April of 2009. With the acquisition, it has formally been confirmed that there will no longer be any contributions from Dimdim to the open source code.

Founded in 2007 by DD Ganguly and Prakash Khot with headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts, Dimdim provided a web-based platform for real-time collaboration and meetings. According to Dimdim, services for monthly accounts will be available until the 15th of March, while annual accounts will be available until their current subscription ends. Moving forward, no further renewals will be offered and refunds will not be provided as accounts will be maintained until their expiration dates.

Further information about the acquisition and what will happen to the project can be found in the official press release and on the Frequently Asked Questions page. The Open Source edition of Dimdim previously allowed for a maximum of 20 participants, while the "Pro" version provided web conferencing for up to 50 participants for an annual fee of $228. Dimdim source code is hosted on SourceForge and is licensed under the GPLv3 licence.

See also:

• Dimdim has been acquired by Salesforce.com, a SourceForge forum post.

(crve)