In August, Nambu decided to shut down its URL shortening service tr.im, citing an inability to monetize traffic, a lack of interest from third parties to take over the service and the advantage that bit.ly, being the default URL shortener on Twitter, has over other services. Less than a week later, tr.im was brought back up due to the supportive response from users, with a new plan: to open source the project and continue operating the service at a loss with the help of donations. The self-imposed deadline to complete its goals was 15 September 2009.
In an update posted last night, tr.im announced that it has now open sourced two (the tr.im API and URL redirect system) out of three modules. The release of the third module, the tr.im website, has been delayed for one to three days because of the need to update the authentication and login system and to fix some bugs. tr.im is also in the process of being handed over from Nambu to Eric Woodward, the president of Nambu, personally. The plan is to then to give the service to the community.
When the full service will be open sourced, it will allow anyone with a domain name to run a URL shortener identical to tr.im. By doing this, users can better protect themselves against link-rot, as they will not be dependent on a third-party service to ensure that their shortened links continue to work.
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