ArsDigita Liquidated, Assets Sold to Red Hat
Slashdot pointed out this Mass High Tech article that says that ArsDigita has shut down and sold its assets to RedHat. Most of the valuable assets were apparently related to ArsDigita's professional services business.
ArsDigita was the consulting vehicle that implemented many of Philip Greenspun's ideas about web publishing systems. Over the past few years, ArsDigita developed some high profile web sites for large companies and non-profit organizations. However, its roster of large corporate customers was never as large as their PR material indicated.
It's too bad that this company failed, because its strategy of leveraging OpenSource tools to build large Content Management Systems is one that we also support in some instances. However, they tried to become a big company, and this strategy probably had more to do with their downfall than their choice of web tools.