Software, Interrupted

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 are being handed out, did I mention that MuleSource has a fabulous Mule ESB and SOA Governance Platform that big vendors should be dying for? ;)

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.

MySQL's Kaj Arno gives the community perspective here.

As more of my friends become wealthy, my bitterness and jealousy only grows :> Congrats to Marten and the team!

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.

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 needs to create the pages in the first place. CSS remains an enormous pain in the neck despite its many benefits.

As we revamped the website over the last few weeks we found that the second you start introducing complexity--even something simple like a protected file that you get to download after registration it all goes out the window.

Of course there is the possibility that we took on too much. A redesign of the corporate site (PHP) along with the installation of Loopfuse; new functions in the Mule developer site (Atlassian Confluence); and a new customer portal (Mule connected to Salesforce.com) seemed like a good idea but in retrospect might have been a little over the top.

Now that the site is up, we are going to take Matt up on his offer of Alfresco's web CMS.

I spent all of last week working on Mule product announcements (please to enjoy the world's first open source SOA Governance Platform) and the new MuleSource website which left nary little time for blogging.

However, we did manage to find time to record the latest episode of Open Season. This time we touched on Adobe's OSS works, Red Hat's new CEO and the realm of the Mule.

And yes, I do want a new MacBook Air.

UPDATED: January 14, 2008 5:30pm
The book isn't actually available until May! Web 3.0 and 4.0 should be in flight by then.

My pal Sarah Lacy's book about Web 2.0 "Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0" is now on sale on Amazon.com. I have been giving her grief about the stupidity of Web 2.0 since she has been writing this magic tome, but I have to offer my sincere congratulations to her for cranking this sucker out.

It's the story of how entrepreneurs in silicon valley started to believe in the web again after the drubbing of the 2000 bust. It recounts the birth and growth of the most popular web 2.0 companies of today including Facebook, Digg, Slide, LinkedIn, Twitter, Six Apart, Yelp, Ning and others, by telling never-before-heard personal stories of the people behind them. and this isn't me (Sarah) just supposing what it was like-- the book is the result of hundreds of hours of interviews with the most important people driving, funding and even railing against the Web 2.0 movement.

I can only hope her next book follows the tale of open source destroying proprietary vendor market share.

For all of you who flamed me for calling Microsoft's "Open Value Subscription" hyperbole, maybe you'll listen to Wired Magazine.

"Openness" may be reaching hyperbolic proportions in Silicon Valley, but the idea is relatively good natured at heart. The practice is rooted in the notion that sharing various assets (i.e., underlying code, operating and communication standards) benefits both consumers and businesses. However, one could argue that the current fad of openness is little more than a Trojan horse.

1. Joining an 'Openness' Consortium
2. Creating an Arbitrarily Open Standard
3. Rebranding Existing Features
4. Buying Into (and Locking Up) an Existing Open Standard

PC World reports that the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) is telling British schools that they should not upgrade to Microsoft's Vista operating system and Office 2007 productivity suite.

Schools might consider using Vista if rolling out all-new infrastructure, but should not introduce it piecemeal alongside other versions of Windows, or upgrade older machines, said the agency, which is responsible for advising British schools and colleges on their IT use.

"We have not had sight of any evidence to support the argument that the costs of upgrading to Vista in educational establishments would be offset by appropriate benefit," it said.

I am in the middle of a week of meetings and presentations and I am getting borked by WebEx no matter what browser I use. My machine at home is running Tiger and WebEx seems to work OK but I am getting killed here with Leopard. Anybody seen this problem?

On the positive side, Parallels is making it happen for me despite the fact that I have to reboot after a few hours. Stephen O'Grady at Red Monk told me that Connect rules and even runs on Linux but I haven't tried it yet.

Off to install Parallels updates...