451 CAOS Theory 
A blog for the enterprise open source community
451 CAOS Links - 2008.01.23
Raven Zachary, January 23, 2008 @ 7:57 pm ETREvoltion Computing obtains funding. Fonality strikes deal with Dell for SMB telephony. SpringSource partners with Capgemini. (and more)
Intel Capital Makes Series A Investment in REvolution Computing, Intel Capital / REvolution Computing (Press Release)
SpringSource Announces Partnership with Capgemini, SpringSource / Capgemini (Press Release)
MuleSource Announces MuleCon 2008, MuleSource (Press Release)
GroundWork Open Source Appoints Tara Spalding as Vice President of Marketing, GroundWork Open Source (Press Release)
Infobright & MySQL AB Extend Partnership Agreement, MySQL AB / Infobright (Press Release)
How To Roll Your Own Linux Distro, InformationWeek, Serdar Yegulalp (Article)
GNU/Solaris - When the fun begins…, ITPro, Richard Hillesley (Article)
Dell, Inc partners with Fonality, Fonality CEO Blog, Chris Lyman (Blog)
Can Sun make MySQL pay?, InteropNews, Jeff Gould (Blog)
Two new points on “Would you do it again for free?”, OpenLogic Blog, Stormy Peters (Blog)
The Software Mission, rPath - Billy on Open Source, Billy Marshall (Blog)
Proprietary forks undermine open source’ purpose, ZDNet - Open Source Blog, Dana Blankenhorn (Blog)
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[...] 451 CAOS Theory - A blog for the enterprise open source community wrote an interesting post today on 451 CAOS Links - 2008.01.23Here’s a quick excerpt REvoltion Computing obtains funding. Fonality strikes deal with Dell for SMB telephony. SpringSource partners with Capgemini. (and more) Intel Capital Makes Series A Investment in REvolution Computing, Intel Capital / REvolution Computing (Press Release) SpringSource Announces Partnership with Capgemini, SpringSource / Capgemini (Press Release) MuleSource Announces MuleCon 2008, MuleSource (Press Release) GroundWork Open Source Appoints Tara Spalding as Vice President of Marketing, GroundWo [...]
This link post is a classic example of why I put little faith in most analysts groups. You are quick to announce that Groundwork has added a new VP of Marketing however I can find no mention on your site of the fact that they have lost a VP of sales, marketing and now a CEO. Could this be because they are a customer? I would think a paying customer would be very interested in the fact that the company of a product they already own or are considering purchasing is having fairly significant executive turnover.
Disclaimer: Groundwork is not a customer of mine.
Hi John - I would never delete your comment. This is a duplicate comment that I just posted on your own blog.
My daily link list is a collection of press releases, articles, and blog entries. As you may know, companies rarely, if ever, issue press releases about executive departures. Had there been an article in the press or a blog entry covering the executive departures at GroundWork, I would have linked to it, as I have linked to other executive departure articles and blog entries in the past.
Another point - there is a whole bunch of written material produced by The 451 Group that is only available to our clients. Often times, we will cover topics in our client-only material that does not go on the blog.
We have published our principles and ethics on our web site:
http://www.the451group.com/scope_of_research/principles.php
I invite you to talk to people who know me well, such as your friend William Hurley, who can provide insight into my character and dedication to objective coverage.
[...] By John | January 23, 2008 A lot of people I have met over the last year keep telling me that the 451 group is one of the good guys. I have always enjoyed Matthew Aslett’s posts. However, I am very suspicious when I notice that for certain companies I only hear the good and never the bad. Here is a comment I posted on their recent link post regarding Groundwork’s new VP of Marketing. [...]
Let me start by saying that your reputation is highly recommended by all of my new friends, whurley included. I also understand there is a very fine line for the kind of job a company like yours has to do to be credible and make money at the same time. I think your external content is great and on a few occasions (with different companies) I have had the opportunity to trial your internal material and it is VERY good.
Now starts the who cares what I think portion. Unfortunately I analyze AG’s more than most people. Probably because I loath Gartner. In my small corner of th world Gartner is a 1 and Redmonk is an 8 (where 0=garbage and 10=Nirvana). My loose criteria for this is based on a few questions.
1) Can the AG provide valuable information to me?
2) Is their material open?
3) Do they disclose their customers when they are commenting on them?
4) Do they handle objective criticism well?
5) Do they pass the smell test?
IMHO, for the 451 Group…
1) Yes, and you are on my RSS.
2) No.
3) No.
4) Yes.
5) Not sure yet. Since I am not privy to your paying customer data I can only go by your public data.
One last note I am not a big fan of automated links for this reason. I know many people use it, however, I like to think that everything that goes on my blog is approved by me and represent my thoughts. I read every article that I link to and therefore I take full responsibility for everything I post.
If you are interested in some of my thoughts on all this please read the following posts…
http://www.johnmwillis.com/wp/open-source-software/my-views-on-oss-esm-part-1/
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