Zoho opens up Zoho Discussions for open source

Zoho recently announced that they are making Zoho Discussions available for free to open source projects. Zoho Discussions is an online forum tool that provides a way for people to discuss various aspects of a project.

Raju Vagesna (whom we interviewed One on One last year) wrote in a blog post that he came up with the idea after reading complaints about GoogleGroups from John Resig. Resig, who works with the JQuery open source project, wrote that his group was unhappy with GoogleGroups because he was unable "to contain and manage Spam." When Zoho heard about this problem, they approached Resig about using Zoho Discussions as a replacement. It was, as they say, apparently the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

After the success with JQuery, Zoho has decided to extend the offer to any open source project and has also offered to tailor each forum to meet the needs of any particular open source project. Vagesna writes that this is one way that Zoho can give back to the open source community:

"We use many open source components in Zoho Apps,” Vagesna said. “As open source advocates, we want to contribute to the community, and making Zoho Discussions freely available to open source projects is our way of fostering that community and saying ‘thank you.’"

For his part Resig has been thrilled by Zoho's offer. "The Discussions team at Zoho have been incredibly accommodating. They are not only providing all the hosting for free but going out of their way to fix concerns and integrate our full Google Groups back history. We’ve been working very closely with them, and they’ve fixed, or are fixing, every issue that we’ve brought forward."

This is a smart move on Zoho's part. By building good will across communities of open source developers, it is creating a reputation as a generous company. It carries the open source philosophy to a new level and it provides groups with a set of services these communities need to grow and develop.

For more information:
- see the Zoho press release

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