What links JBoss, XenSource, Zimbra and MySQL (aside from the fact that they were all acquired for large amounts of money)? Peter Fenton and/or Benchmark Capital.
UPDATE This post corrects a couple of mistakes in the original version. UPDATE
Fenton made his investments in JBoss, Zimbra and XenSource while at Accel. Benchmark also invested in Zimbra, via […]

Terracotta obtains new round of funding. Pentaho announces quarterly successes. Hyperic releases update to HQ product. (and more)

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“It ain’t how hard you hit…” It’s interesting today to see Matt Asay posting about the lessons he learned from (as he puts it) Lineo’s failure. I occurred to me that while open source bloggers/vendors are very good at pointing out success stories they are less inclined to share the lessons learned when things go […]

SpringSource acquires Covalent. XAware obtains $7.4m in additional funding. Sun announces details of its $1m open source awards. (and more)

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Obviously, 2008 is off to a roaring start for open soure M&A. Amid all of the deals and our usual discussions with open source software vendors, we’re hearing more and more executives talk about the long-term potential of business based on open code. The SpringSource acquisition of Covalent is a perfect example. We had just […]

The rate of open source M&A continues apace, this time involving two open source software vendors. SpringSource has announced plans to acquire Covalent Technologies for an undisclosed fee. At first glance the deal makes a lot of sense as it marries SpringSource’s Spring Framework-related products and services with the Apache support and services offered by […]

Nokia acquires Trolltech. Black Duck announces Code Center. LoopFuse launches update. (and more)

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Yet another open source acquisition. This time it is mobile device vendor Nokia stepping up to the plate with its purchase of open source development tools vendor Trolltech. Nokia will offer NOK 16 is cash for Trolltech, which values the firm at roughly $153m (taking into account currency conversion and rounding).
Trolltech hadn’t yet announced its […]

The merits of the open source distribution model in generating sales leads have been well documented but it’s always good to see statistics that back up the theory. I recently talked with a new open source software vendor (who will remain nameless, although in the interests of avoiding confusion I should state it was not […]

HP launches new open source initiative. Sun and IONA announce quarterly earnings. Novell releases expanded Linux packaging system. (and more)

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Open source development and network site Ohloh has open sourced code for its site and service, which tracks open source developers, their projects and contributions. The company is starting what it says will be the opening of all of its code with Ohcount, its source code line counter now available under the GPLv2.
Ohloh is among […]

REvoltion Computing obtains funding. Fonality strikes deal with Dell for SMB telephony. SpringSource partners with Capgemini. (and more)

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Earlier this month I took a look at Fortune’s tips for initial public offerings in 2008 and passed comment on the open source-related contenders. Given the events of the past ten days or so it is worth taking another look at the open source vendors that might make IPO candidates between now and the turn […]

Greenplum / Zenoss / Alfresco / Automattic obtain new funding. Hyperic appoints new chairman. Telecoms form OpenSAF. (and more)

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“2008 is starting with a bang for open source,” wrote Mark Radcliffe last week, and he’s not wrong. Not only did we see Sun’s $1bn acquisition of MySQL, but we’ve also seen an extraordinary amount of venture capital funding. Today saw no fewer than three investments announced, with Greenplum landing $27m Series C, Zenoss closing […]

Sun acquires MySQL. Oracle acquires BEA. OpenAds obtains $15m in funding. (and more)

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Q. When is a program not a program? A. When it is all the works ever licensed under GPLv3. Via the Software Freedom Law Center comes news that the Free Software Foundation has published a document clarifying its position on patent litigation related to the GPLv3 - specifically what constitutes a program under the GPLv3 […]

Since Sun announced its acquisition of MySQL for $1bn, there have been some suggestions that perhaps Sun paying too much for the open source database vendor. Calculating the multiple for MySQL has proved difficult because there are no official figures to go on, and also because many of the unofficial figures that are floating around […]

As Mark Hinkle has already noted, The 451 Group recently published a brief on open source mergers and acquisitions, written by open source research director, Raven Zachary, and financial analyst Brenon Daly. It is a happy coincidence that the report was published the day before Sun announced its acquisition of MySQL.
Clearly the report does not […]

Following on from my instant reaction to the news that Sun was acquiring MySQL for $1bn, the deal deserves some closer attention. Subscribers to The 451 Group’s TechDealMaker service can read the QuickTake and the full Deal Analysis, while a couple of points are worthy of further analysis:

Despite the best efforts of MySQL and other […]