Refining the Beekeeper model. Investment opportunities. Schooner, Gear6 and Virident line up memcached appliances. The launch of the Open Source Channel Alliance. Is source code necessary? And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory

Of bees and trees
We noted last week that James Dixon, CTO of Pentaho, had updated his Beekeeper model for understanding the commercial-community relationships employed by vendors to engage with open source. Roberto Galoppini quickly followed up with some feedback, as did Tarus Balog. That, and other ideas, prompted James to knock out a second draft.

Open to investment
Reaction to our latest CAOS report on VC funding for open source is beginning to trickle in Matt Asay noted that it is time for the investment started producing more returns for investors, while OStatic picked up on our observation that investors prefer companies with hybrid approaches to licensing.

You wait ages for a memcached-based appliance…
… and then three come along at once. Gear6 announced its plans to launch a new memcached appliance on April 20, while Virident confirmed that it will unveil its GreenCloud server For MySQL and memcached applications on April 21. Meanwhile Schooner Information Technology emerged from stealth mode with its appliances for MySQL and memcached and $15m in Series A funding.

The best of the rest
# Red Hat and SYNNEX launched the Open Source Channel Alliance, which also includes Alfresco, EnterpriseDB, Ingres, Jaspersoft, Likewise, Pentaho, Zmanda, Zenoss and Zimbra.

# Sun introduced new Open Network Systems and HPC hardware with which to monetize at the point of value.

# CollabNet introduced CollabNet TeamForge 5.2, the successor to CollabNet SourceForge Enterprise.

# Cleversafe delivered new data storage appliance and updates to its Dispersed Storage Network (dsNet) technology.

# Terracotta delivered version 3.0 of Java clustering and caching software.

# MuleSource partnered with GigaSpaces to offer high availability for Mule ESB.

# Matt Asay noted that CIOs are committing more to Red Hat and open source, citing data from Piper Jaffray.

# Matt Asay also reported on open source as a market development tool.

# Free or freedom? Savio Rodrigues wondered whether source code is a necessary part of fulfilling IT cost-reduction goals.

# As did Bruno von Rotz.

# Brian Gentile maintained that open source can and should do more than just lower adoption costs.

# Miles Berry, website manager for opensourceschools.org.uk, explained how the four freedoms of free software offer compelling reasons for educators to look seriously at using free software.