Spinoff player to compete in open-source software

Ingres database software to be purchased from Computer Associates by private equity firm and operate as stand-alone.
The New York Times

The story "Spinoff player to compete in open-source software" published November 7, 2005 at 5:37 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[Don_Dodge]

Darwinian effect on databases

Open Source projects must pass the Darwinian test (only the fittest (most interesting) survive) to attract developers and contributors to the project. Maybe 1% of all Open Source projects attract more than 30 developer/contributors. Then the user community applies its own Darwinian test to that 1% of projects, as only the most useful and supported projects attracts a significant user community. The Open Source projects you read about are the ones that passed the Darwinian tests. Yet, the media would have you believe that Open Source is a sweeping movement.

There are VERY few VC investment opportunities in Open Source. There will only be one or two winners in each space, and the larger spaces are already covered. Linux has already been covered by Red Hat, IBM, HP, Novell, and others. Apache is also supported by many companies including Covalent and Microsoft. The database space is already covered by MySQL, Postgres, Ingres, SleepyCat, BerkleyDB, and 4dbObjects. JBoss is the best pure play in the App Server space, but there are several others.

I wrote a blog on this subject this morning with my take on how this will shake out and who the winners will be. read the whole story here
http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2005/11/open_source_the.html

[firepad]

VC Investment in GPL -- Can a Brick Fly?

Much VC investment in open source software is silly. But not for the reasons Microsoft would have you believe:

http://unreasoning.blogspot.com/2005/11/investing-in-open-source-can-brick-fly_08.html