Open source gets frothy

The announcement this week of JBoss being acquired by RedHat for $350M (plus $70M earn out) is generating more interest in the open source market from a variety of vendors. Taking a short look back, you find that RedHat acquired Sistina in 2003 for around $31M in stock, Novell acquired SUSE the same year for $210M in cash and Checkpoint was on the verge of acquiring Sourcefire last year for $225M in cash and stock before that transaction ran into the US government. To top it off, the Oracle acquisition machine has announced that it will start acquiring open source companies.

Not all of these events are directly related to our work at Vyatta, but they do point to a general frothiness and excitement in the open source market. While we enjoy being in a market full of excitement and press, I've been working hard to make sure that we stay focused on building our business. As the old Navy saying goes, "Keep your head and eyes in the boat." If you're half as excited as we are about the community growth and open source networking movement that we've started, stay tuned - froth comes on top of a latte and from waves crashing on the shore. For now, I'm hoping to raise my cup to the seeds of the coffee plant :)