I suppose it's not enough for a popular online service to face the reaper, come back from the brink of extinction, and turn open-source. No, there has to be some kind of controversy surrounding the whole affair--can't just fade quietly into the open-licensed light nowadays.

Such is the situation offered up by the death and resurrection of tr.im, a popular online URL shortening service whose recent entrance into the open-source community has been met with a touch of scandal. Perhaps scandal is the wrong word, though. Scathing might be better, given the tone of some of tr.im's blogging and actions as of late.

It's easy to talk about open-source as if it's some large, altruistic community that wants to do nothing but share-and-share alike. Everybody's friendly. Everybody's happy. Just a ton of developers churning out free code for everyone to use, distribute, and polish into a scintillating hunk of software that's going to revolutionize the world! Or, at the very least, stick it to Microsoft.

This is an idyllic fantasy. In the real world, businesses and developers don't always play nicely. You've already read about the back-and-forth bombing wars between the PortableApps and LiberKey developers. You can now add tr.im to the list... but who exactly are they fighting?

The History

Tr.im is a Website that shortens your URLs and provides statistics for how many people actually click on the miniature link. Easy. Simple. As you might expect, tr.im isn't the only game in town. I could fill a blog post with alternate URL services, but there's only one that's worth mentioning in the context of this story: bit.ly. Given the push for shorter URLs on today's Web, you'd expect that tr.im and it's four-letter domain would be wiping the floor with a competitor like the five-letter bit.ly.

Not so.

Bit.ly might have that extra digit, but it also has the backing of the popular online communications service Twitter. In fact, bit.ly is the sole, default URL shortener for any hyperlink you post on Twitter's main site. This pairing is like bringing Mike Tyson to a playground fight, and it was enough to deliver a knockout blow to tr.im's business model last week. Rising network costs sapped the company's cash; Twitter's endorsement of a single-shortener solution drained their will to fight--for a few days, at least.

The Eleventh Count

Not one day after its fateful passing, tr.im faded back into existence with a pledge to keep servers running and URLs minimized for an infinite duration. This was spelled out more clearly in a subsequent post nearly a week later. The developers now plan to release the full source code for tr.im into the wild, allowing anyone to use, develop, or take over, subject to confines of the service's MIT open-source license--of which there are essentially no restrictions whatsoever.

The "community" will receive the rights to the tr.im domain. How that will work is anyone's guess right now. Founder Eric Woodward is assuming all operating costs related to the transformation, and tr.im itself is opening its statistics and financial information for everyone to see. Truly, tr.im. intends to become as fully open of a project as is possible. That's an altruistic aim, but that's not to say that tr.im is keeping its chin held high throughout the ordeal.

I Hate You, Bit.ly

I jest, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Woodward repeats this phrase in his bathroom mirror every morning. After all, he did turn down bit.ly's $10,000 offer to take over tr.im's full service. We'll never know whether he saw this as an undervaluation or whether he truly detests bit.ly's partnership with Twitter that much, although one could easily make an argument for both. According to TechCrunch--who Woodward is rather unhappy with right now--the founder was asking for a near-six-figure sum for all of tr.im. Given that tr.im is now shooting for the open-source route, you don't need me to tell you where that request ended up.

As for bit.ly, Woodward is as upset by its partnership with Twitter--which he considers to be "controlling this flow of shared link data in a way it would not otherwise be able to"--as he is with bit.ly's quest to find a Web-wide solution for link-rot. What's link-rot? Look no further than tr.im's demise. When a URL shortener goes the way of the dinosaur, so do all the links. Any link that's ever been referenced, published, or Tweeted on the Web suddenly becomes invalid. Although bit.ly is in the dominant position through Twitter's partnership, it has just as much a vested interest in preserving its links in perpetuity as any other URL shortening service. And that's how the company developed the idea behind 301works.org--a centralized hub that where all interested URL-shortening services could archive links.

"That initiative, 301works.org, is little more than a bit.ly public relations stunt, which is why we have not joined it," wrote Woodward in a blog post. "It has little substance, claiming to address link-rot while it does nothing of the kind. If a URL shortener decides to close, only the donation of the domain name and the data can address the existing links. For any high-volume URL shortener, like tr.im, it is unlikely a commercial entity would do that given the offers we have seen come in this past week to immediately hijack all tr.im URLs."

Doing What to the Gas Tank?

I'd like to think that Woodward is doing his part to open up URL redirection and engage the community for its ability to make new advancements in this competitive space. But, honestly, I think Woodward has realized the light at the end of the tunnel and has decided to adopt a scorched-earth policy by using the death of tr.im as a potential thorn in the foot for bit.ly. Given the relative unpopularity of tr.im on Twitter--no more than two to three percent of all outbound links compared to bit.ly's roughly 80% domination--the actual valuation for the service would not have been very high at all.

Since Woodward promised to keep tr.im out of spammer hands, and refused to sell the entire service to his archrival, he had but one choice: Switch to open-source and use a free model to undercut bit.ly somewhere down the line. If he couldn't beat the big guy at his game, then at least he could be the person that started the open revolution. Just imagine what a company like Microsoft, Twitter, or anyone could build on top of a fully-functioning, URL-shortening framework. Perhaps, someday, a derivative of tr.im could become a free, feature-jacked alternative to bit.ly. That's a lot more impressive--and painful to the Twitter-bit.ly conglomeration--than burying tr.im for good.

Besides, this couldn't be a philosophical issue. If Woodward truly hated bit.ly's involvement in 301works.org, why would he open his entire program and datasets? This now gives anyone--even bit.ly--the ability to use tr.im or one of its future derivatives in direct conjunction with the program Woodward despises. That's like Microsoft saying, "Oh, yes, we hate Linux... so here's all of our code."

I could be wrong. Maybe I just have deep-seeded issues or some internal inability to find the good in people--a reverse Luke Skywalker, if you will. The whole tr.im scenario just seems a little odd to me. And no matter how you slice the pie, there's still some kind of resentment behind the service's desire to jump into the open-souce boat. Woodward should have sold out to bit.ly, pocketed the $10,000, and used that money to fund a new open-source project to address URL shortening and link-rot in one fell swoop. Also, Hawaii. I hear it's the perfect stress-buster.

David Murphy (@ Acererak) is a technology journalist and former Maximum PC editor. He writes weekly columns about the wide world of open-source as well as weekly roundups of awesome, freebie software. Befriend him on Twitter, especially if you have an awesome app or game you're dying to recommend!