Negative Approach

Open source funding news: $9m for Alfresco and $11m for Zenoss

Today Alfresco announced a $9 million strategic funding round from SAP Ventures while Zenoss announced an $11 million round from Grotech Capital.

While I don't expect 2008 to have the volume of open source related fundings that we saw in 2006 and 2007, it's because the majority of the companies who raised money are not strapped for cash.

Now I'll just sit back and wait for these guys to send me my stock options and/or sign over 15% of all future earnings.

Hosting files and downloads with Amazon S3 is easy as pie

This weekend we moved our Mule Enterprise distribution to Amazon's S3 service and so far it's been pretty fantastic. A couple of simple calls not only allow for a file to have download permissions but also allow for time-bombed URLs if you need them.

Add to that the fact that the bandwidth is blazingly fast (shockingly fast, I dare say) and the move to the S3 cloud is a huge win--and a major market disruptor.

Despite having blogged about Amazon's EC2 and S3 before, I didn't understand the full impact until now. Kudos to Amazon.

I … Read more

Microsoft remains evil--attempting to charge sites to import your MSN messenger contacts

You have to admire the guile (stupidity?) of a company has already faced so much anti-trust heat and still do crazy things like this. Essentially, Microsoft is saying that the contacts that users put into MSN messenger belong to MS, not the user. And if that user wants to import those contacts to a social networking site, the site should pay them. Bizarre and stupid.

The problem typically arises when a social network, say, offers its users the ability to import the list of contacts they've accumulated on Microsoft Hotmail.

Since the summer, my friends tell me, Mister Softie … Read more

Take a ride on Open Season Episode 10 with Marten Mickos and Rich Green

It only took 10 episodes of our illustrious podcast series for us to get the big-dog interview. That's right, Matt Asay, me, and Ashlee Vance spent an hour with Marten and Rich to figure out just what the heck happened and why it didn't happen to us!

Open Season Episode 10: The MySQL acquisition forces us off our respective couches.

I wish someone would give me $1 billion after a five week courtship.

Advertisement: Hey, BEA people--MuleSource is hiring!

Dear BEA friends,

Now that the Oracle acquisition is finally coming to pass, take your cash prize and get the hell out of there. Join us and dance on the grave of proprietary apps!

I need as many sales people and customer support engineers as we can get our hands on.

Apologies for the blatant advertisement. Consider it community service.

Oracle buys BEA after all (what the heck is going on today?)

Marketwatch is reporting that Oracle finally got its hands on BEA after raising their price. Oracle agreed to lift its offer to $19.375 a share in cash, compared to the company's original bid last October of $17 a share. BEA had been holding out for $21 a share. The new proposal reflects a premium of 24% over BEA's closing price on Tuesday of $15.58. The deal also values BEA at $7.2 billion, up from Oracle's initial bid of $6.7 billion What the hell is going on out there? (Oh, and while cash prizes … Read more

Holy smokes! Sun acquires MySQL!

Wow. Sun is acquiring MySQL for about $1 billion. I think it's a huge win for both companies--and while it would have been nice to see another open source IPO this is a great outcome for a great company.

So what are we announcing today? That in addition to acquiring MySQL, Sun will be unveiling new global support offerings into the MySQL marketplace. We'll be investing in both the community, and the marketplace - to accelerate the industry's phase change away from proprietary technology to the new world of open web platforms.

Read all about it on Jonathan's blog.… Read more

First take on Loopfuse Marketing and Sales Automation (Verdict: Fantastic)

We just launched our new website and started using Loopfuse for analytics and marketing automation and I can't believe how cool the product is. The dashboards and tracking mechanisms are like crack for marketing people--we just can't look away.

LoopFuse makes marketing automation simple, enabling you to generate demand and identify qualified leads so you can focus on the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, revenue growth, and overall business success.

You can get your Loopfuse-as-a-Service, or as an open source product. I can't believe these guys haven't been acquired already.

Building websites still sucks

My first "real"-ish job was at a web design shop in NYC as a web monkey. Back in those days you did all your own code and all the photoshop etc. (and we walked uphill both ways to the office.) None of this 5 man team to make one little website nonsense and no fancy-pants Dreamweaver to write your code for you.

As time passed, more tools and CMS systems have become available which in theory should make web development and maintenance easier. Languages like PHP have made templating much easier, but in the end someone still … Read more