CodePlex, patents and Linux code. An interesting few days for Microsoft open source.
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CodePlex, CodePlex, CodePlex!
Microsoft launched the CodePlex Foundation to facilitate
open source contributions, and confirmed the departure of Sam Ramji.
Patents, Patents, Patents!
The OIN confirmed the acquisition of 22 patents formerly
owned by …
Reaction to EC’s Oracle-Sun delay. OIN to acquire ex-Microsoft patents. And more.
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Reaction to EC’s Oracle-Sun delay
Despite widespread criticism of the European Commission’s
decision to open a formal investigation into Oracle’s proposed
acquisition of Sun, Glyn Moody maintained that the EC deserves credit for
making open source a central part of its analysis. Meanwhile
Monty Program (by way of Steven J Vaughan Nicholls) explained why the EU
should block Oracle/Sun, Roberto Galoppini reported …
Matt Asay has written an interesting post speculating that Oracle might use the delay caused by the European Commission investigation into its acquisition of Sun to drive the price down. Sounds reasonable enough to me.
In it, Matt makes a couple of statements, one I agree with: “Oracle… likely will prove to be a better manager of this asset than Sun was”; and one that I have real doubts about: “MySQL’s… doing just fine, thank you”.
MySQL might well be doing fine. Unfortunately Sun’s financial results don’t actually provide any evidence either way.
Billings for the MySQL/Infrastructure were up 51% to $313m in FY09, according to information presented with Sun’s financial results, with revenue hitting $100m (up 10%) in …
[Read more]By now you are probably aware that the European Commission has decided to launch an extended investigation into Oracle’s acquisition of Sun based on concerns over MySQL.
The new has prompted a lot of criticism of the EC, much of it suggesting that the delay will do considerable harm to Sun (and therefore Oracle). This argument is valid - Sun’s already declining revenue has been in freefall since the deal was announced and one wonders how far it will fall in another 90 days of stasis.
Other criticism, (such as this from Matt Asay) focuses on the suggestion that the delay will do little to help MySQL or its users, and that the EC fails to understand open source.
This also has some …
[Read more]Intalio acquires Jetty. Red Hat updates JBoss platform. $12m funding for Medsphere. And more.
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# Intalio acquired Webtide, developer of Jetty application server.
# Red Hat delivered JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0, as well as JBoss Operations Network (ON) 2.3 and launched Catalyst partner program.
# Medsphere raised $12m to support ongoing development and expansion in open source health IT.
…[Read more]Jay has already provided a good overview of the debate related to the apparent decline in the usage of the GPLv2. I don’t intend to cover the same ground, but I did want to quickly respond to a statement made by Matt Asay in his assessment of the reasons for and implications of reduced GPLv2 usage.
He wrote:
“as Open Core becomes the default business model for ‘pure-play’ open-source companies, we will see more software licensed under the Apache license”
I don’t doubt that we will see more software licensed under the Apache license, and also more vendors making use of permissively-licensed code, but I don’t see a correlation with the Open-Core model.
…[Read more]We reported recently on Red Hat’s revenue growth and deferred revenue. One of the things I have been looking at recently is the slowdown in Red Hat’s growth in recent years, and the opportunities that the company has to improve that growth.
For some perspective it is worth noting that while Red Hat’s revenue has been growing steadily:
The rate of growth has been in decline for some time:
We have also noted (451 Group clients only) that the company will in …
[Read more]Peter Fenton’s open source investment tips. Boxee raises $6m. And more.
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*451 CAOS Links will return on August 25*
Digesting the VMware-SpringSource deal
In the wake of VMware’s acquisition of SpringSource the WSJ
examined Peter
Fenton’s open source investment portfolio and what he looks for
in an open source vendor. Meanwhile Matt Asay noted that VMware’s
purchase of SpringSource is the first big acquisition of a
company based on an Apache license, while Charles Babcock
reported …
Red Hat is celebrating the 10 year anniversary of its initial public offering. An anniversary to be proud of for Red Hat, but one that has given The VAR Guy pause for thought about the relative success of open source in the past 10 years.
“Would anyone have predicted that no additional open source companies would launch IPOs over the next decade? Ten years without an open source IPO … amazing and somewhat depressing for open source business advocates,” writes the VAR Guy.
It is somewhat depressing that there are not more public open source vendors. However, the statement that there have been …
[Read more]Monty Widenius dissects MySQL’s dual license. Intuit moves to the EPL. And more.
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# Monty Widenius blogged about the apparent changes to the dual licensing of MySQL.
# Intuit announced that its code.intuit.com will be moving from CPL to EPL.
# Matt Asay asked whether Google’s open source advocacy might be a scheme to lower the value of patents.
# Vision Mobile’s Andreas Constantinou explained the differences between open source …
[Read more]