(Credit: Matt Asay)

Last year’s Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) was opened up by Red Hat’s then CEO, Matthew Szulik. This year we’re hearing from Red Hat’s new CEO, Jim Whitehurst. Jim is very different from Matthew, but there are some similarities.

Two components of the power of the open-source model that I didn’t originally recognize:

1. Public policy value of open source, especially outside the US.
2. You don’t have any barrier or property or scarcity, which makes it tough to make money. But from the customer’s point of view, this means that you’re having to earn your renewal every single day of the contract.

On the first point:

… Source:The Open Road

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(Credit: Matt Asay)

I’ve known Jon Williams, chief technology officer of Kaplan Test, for a few years, and have always been impressed by his active involvement in the technology world. He blogs. He helps to run a New York CTO breakfast club. He keeps involved with various open-source communities. He’s an ideal CTO.

Given Jon’s background, one statement that he made in his opening remarks particularly impressed me:

I don’t use open source because it’s free….I use open source because it works.

Jon then offered up several key benefits derived from open source at Kaplan Test:

… Source:The Open Road

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Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Open Source

In the rather rarefied atmosphere of web standards compliance, the Acid3 suite of browser tests is like a pro wrestler’s chair to the back of the head: if you can take it and keep standing, that’s very impressive. The Acid3 suite, first released at the beginning of this month, pushes browsers to the very edges of their rendering, SVG, CSS and DOM scripting abilities — all necessary for a consistent and interoperable Web 2.0 experience.

As with the earlier Acid2 test, there’s been a bit of a horserace among browser development teams to be the first to the finish line with Acid3, including the WebKit squad responsible for Safari’s underlying engine; Acid3 dev Ian Hickson gives major props to Apple and the WebKit devs on his blog, including efforts to clear bugs in the test suite itself (he had to work quite hard to find standards compliance issues in WebKit). On Wednesday evening, both the Opera and WebKit teams declared a 100% score — not a full pass, as there are minor issues to clean up, but nevertheless the test looks like it should. With the Mac nightly build of WebKit available for download, you too can feel the power of this fully operational web standards battle station.

[A quick clarification: While both Opera and WebKit have claimed 100% on Acid3, only one of the browsers — WebKit — has a publicly downloadable version right now that can make that score. Opera’s build won’t be released for another week or so.]

Thanks Adam

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Filed under: Software, Internet Tools

Our friends on the Yahoo! Messenger team dropped us a note alerting us to their newly released Yahoo! Messenger 3 Beta 3 for the Mac. What’s the massive news with this beta? As you might recall previous betas made Messenger a Universal Binary and added tabbed chats. New in this beta: voice calling.

That’s right, you can now do the following with Yahoo! Messenger, just like our Windows running comrades:

• Make free computer to personal calls
• Sign up for a Phone Out account which will allow you to call regular phones with Yahoo! Messenger
• Send free text messages to cell phones (though the receiver might get charged for the text)
• Receive calls from phones on your Mac if you have a Phone In account (these accounts aren’t free)

I gave the new features a whirl, so check out our gallery with screenshots of the new features, or head on over to the Yahoo! Messenger blog and watch their screencast.

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Filed under: Financials and analyticals, Private equity industry, Management fees

It’s been a year since Fortress Investment Group (NYSE: FIG) went public. At that time, the offering got a nice reception. After all, investors were hungry for hedge fund and private equity operators.

Of course, that’s no longer the case. And the stock of Fortress has gone from $34 to a low of $9.50.

Well, this week, the firm announced its fiscal Q4 results. There was a net loss of $29.3 million, or $0.43 per share and pre-tax distributable earnings were down 43% to $78 million, or $0.18 per share. Revenues were also lackluster - falling 22% to $196 million. Even though, with a large amount of assets under management (roughly $33.2 billion), Fortress saw a 43% spike in management fees.

With the roiling credit and equity markets, it’s tough to finish deals. As a result, there hasn’t been much opportunity to realize gains.

Despite all this, the Fortress conference call was upbeat. Keep in mind that the company focuses on asset-based investments, which tend to have less leverage and lower valuations. Besides, as major banks repair their balance sheets, there should be opportunities for players like Fortress to get some choice deals.

Interestingly enough, Fortress thinks that the second half of 2008 will be quite active. And, if the company can scoop up some transactions at compelling valuations, it could position itself nicely for the next couple years, when things get back to normal.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

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