(Credit: Matt Asay)Last night my wife and I had “the bad boy of open source,” Marc Fleury, over for dinner. He was in town for the Open Source Goat Rodeo (to be blogged (and YouTube’d) separately later today). I was fortunate to get his time over dinner.
I’ve known Marc for a few years, but not as well as I would have liked. I didn’t really get to know him until after JBoss was acquired and he became somewhat less involved in the industry, taking a well-deserved break.
He may have once been a “bad boy,” and he might still be such in his spare time, but over dinner and with my kids he was great. You can see him here overseeing the education of my kids: More math and science, less of the Asay staple of literature. 
… Source:The Open Road
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I had dinner with a good friend tonight from the open-source world, and we ended up having the same conversation I had with a few other friends from the open-source business community at lunch yesterday. The conversation began with Sun and ended with Ubuntu. In between, the two came together.
Why doesn’t Sun see things this way?
We’re not the only ones asking the question. Seeking Alpha is reporting that things are heating up between Sun and Canonical/Ubuntu, with Sun “preparing to certify more of its servers for Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux.” I hope so. I think it would be excellent for both celebrations.
Solaris is a fantastic operating system. I can appreciate why Sun and its employees cling to it - to the innovations they’ve made - so tightly. But so was NetWare before it. At some point technology takes a back seat to market momentum.
Ubuntu has that. Solaris? Not so much. That’s just how the market goes.
… Source:The Open Road
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Filed under: Financials and analyticals, Raising money, Texas Pacific Group, Investments, Value and lack thereof
There was an interesting report that surfaced over the weekend that took greater hold on Monday morning, yet nothing official has been released.
Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM) shares are rising sharply this day on “weekend talk” that they will be supported by an investment from private-equity group led by TPG Inc, also known as Texas Pacific Group. The company has been forced to write-down billions on home-mortgages and loan losses since the credit crisis, and WaMu is also one of the big quasi-money-center banks that’s at-risk of being in jeopardy on its own. According to Reuters, it said “a source” says the deal could be announced as soon as today
It could be a substantial investment of some $5 billion, although once you get into details the number mysteriously changes wildly among sources as far as terms and as far as dollars. Whatever it is, it’s working for the banking giant whose stock has been battered. Shares are up $2.70, over 26%, to $12.87 on the speculation. The 52-week range is $8.72 to $44.66.
What is perhaps more interesting than anything, is that this doesn’t necessarily include Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC). That company has been listed as one of several companies in a position to be a savior for distressed financial companies. This would also lend credibility to a bank or private equity saving grace for National City Corp. (NYSE: NCC), which has also been in the soup.
If private equity ends up being a savior for the banks, even if it is an iconic trend it would be nothing short of ironic if you have been reading about all the private equity deals that have failed.
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The cheekiness/gall of Free/Iliad is almost shocking.
Free/Iliad is a billion-dollar French ISP that’s taking sophistry to new depths. In response to a cease and desist letter that it either stop distributing with its arguments about why it’s entitled to heavily modify software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) without contributing back its modifications, as Pierre writes.
What’s of particular interest here’s the way Mr. Niel [Free’s founder] argues the GPL is irrelevant to this case. His claims is [sic] roughly this: my 3,000,000 GPLoaded-home routers are part of my network therefore the GPL doesn’t apply since I don’t distribute any software outside of my network.
Oh, really?
… Source:The Open Road
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I had breakfast with Scott Switzer, CTO of OpenX, in New York yesterday, and spoke at Dave Rosenberg’s MuleSource conference today, where I had the opportunity to talk with Dave, Larry Augustin, and others from the open-source world. One thing seems fairly clear to me:
Done right, most open-source companies face a two-horse race: the leading open-source vendor against the leading proprietary vendor.
Reality is not so clean, of course. There are still a range of leftover incumbents from software’s heady days of massive license fees, which will endure for some time. But these are simple fodder for the huge proprietary companies to either mow down or acquire, and for open-source companies to undermine on their way to market penetration.
Good marketing leaves just two competitors standing. The reality is that there will be one (or, at most, two) strong open-source offerings duking it out with one (or, at most, two) strong proprietary offerings. Every time someone speaks up Tibco in an article, you want the journalist remembering that MuleSource is on its heels. The same is true for all open-source projects.
With this in mind, here are some of the leading match-ups:
… Source:The Open Road
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Filed under: Software, Internet Tools
Flow, a pleasant FTP client for the Mac, has definitely come a long way since we last took a look at it (so very long ago). Flow just hit version 1.0, and here are some of the new features:
- QuickLook
- Built-in editor
- FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, .Mac, and local FTP
- Droplets to upload swiftly
Flow is designed specifically for Mac OS X Leopard (version 10.5). Flow costs just $29; you can also download a free 15-day trial version then buy a license. I am an adamant Transmit/Panic addict; however, Flow has such a great Aqua-licious UI and feature list, that I might make the jump (sorry Panic guys).
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
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