When open source eats itself: SpringSource acquires Covalent
Ostensibly, SpringSource today announced the acquisition of Covalent to beef up its support for the Apache-sponsored project Tomcat. The problem with such thinking is that if this is the real reason, SpringSource got very little for its money.
There's no doubt that Spring+Apache is a recipe for success. In my own experience, I've seen widespread adoption of both, and often together (not the least being within the product my company, Alfresco, ships). Rod Johnson, CEO and founder of SpringSource, states:
We see Apache code being used by many of our customer accounts--the Apache Web server, Tomcat, Web services frameworks, Active MQ and a slew of other Apache technologies. We see pent-up demand for services from folks using Spring and Apache technologies.
It's unclear how an acquisition furthers this, since the best that SpringSource has acquired is a few developers associated with the project, but not the project itself.
As I've noted in the past, being the "source of the code" is the new IP in software. This angle makes a lot of sense for an "acquisition," where acquisition effectively means "hiring the core developers from a project." JBoss was the maestro at this sort of "acquisition."
But it may well be that Tomcat is pervasive enough that attempting to centralize support in SpringSource may not work. It certainly didn't work for Covalent. While Covalent had a thriving business, it was also a small (albeit profitable) business. Covalent didn't actively seek venture money and arguably could not have raised any, at least not from tier-one venture investors. It's somewhat telling that Peter Fenton, the common link between SpringSource (he's an investor) and Covalent (He invested in Hyperic, the off-shoot from the original Covalent company), invested in everything but Covalent.
This isn't to say that this was a bad move on SpringSource's part. Rod Johnson will get a profitable revenue stream from Covalent and some great developers, as well as solid management in Mark Brewer.
What he won't get is any measurable control over the Tomcat project. Did SpringSource therefore waste its money? No, but it may not have gained much, either.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Matt, I think you were right on the money with that comment. The market is
implementing Spring and Apache technologies together and organizations are
asking SpringSource to lead technically and to be their support partner.
No one can own an
Apache project. That's how Apache works, and we respect its governance
model. We don't need to "own" Apache Tomcat, HTTP and other projects to
provide the best quality support. What we did need was folk who have made a
real contribution to the code, who know the internals intimately and who can
enable us to guarantee to fix internals.
We couldn't agree more. That's way we have virtually all the Spring
committers on staff and part of the attractiveness of Covalent was the
leadership and contributions that there developers are providing on Apache
projects.
We got a lot for our money:
1) A blue chip customer base (half of the Fortune 500)
2) A track record of success delivering mission critical products and
support services
3) Key technical leadership in the Apache projects which are of most
interest to SpringSource and our customers
4) Products which are a perfect strategic fit with our product roadmap
5) Products and services which are being demanded by the marketplace
and our customers
6) A dedicated and committed staff that knows how to serve the customer
and lead technically
Rgds
Rod