Compiere, an open source ERP company, announced today that they have raised $6M U.S. from NEA (New Enterprise Associates) and are moving from Portland to Silicon Valley. I haven’t had the opportunity to talk with Jorg Janke, Compiere’s CEO, about this news yet. Jorg recently moved the company from Monroe, Connecticut, to Portland, Oregon, and I am bit surprised that he’s moving again - this time into the center of a highly-constrained recruiting market. Then again, NEA has an office on Sand Hill Road (in Menlo Park, CA), and with the venture money now, Jorg can afford to operate a company there!

It’s no secret that I like the geographically diverse nature of open source. There is nothing about open source that is particularly related to Silicon Valley - it’s a global phenomenon. The connection relates to the amount of technology venture capital and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, but there’s no reason why an open source company cannot be successful outside of California. We’ve already seen some great proofs of this. California is full of some very smart people, and it remains the center of the software business world, but it’s not the entirety of the software business world.

As I am in the process of moving to Portland, I am not too happy about Compiere’s decision to move, but that is entirely for personal reasons. The city is trying to position itself as an open source center, and it’s one of the reasons that I am moving there. Portland’s contribution to open source has mostly been with Linux - it’s the home of Linus Torvalds, the OSDL, and Linux innovation centers by Intel, IBM, and others. Losing a non-Linux company is a move in the wrong direction for a city that’s trying to build a robust, diverse, tech economy around “open” businesses.