Matt Asay writes today about the prospects for open source vendors going public or, more likely, being acquired, and wonders whether open source vendors should “hold out for an IPO” or “capitulate” and be acquired.

The latter seems far more likely, especially in the current economic climate. We have written before about the open source vendors most likely to go public in the next couple of years.

Looking at the list of contenders again it is easy to imagine that they could all be snapped up before they make it public thanks to the fact that 1) open source vendors are very attractive investments 2) it is difficult for open source vendors to build the momentum to do so.

I spoke recently with …

Dana Blankenhorn asks whether open source is hurt by piracy, prompted by comments made by Louis Suarez-Potts, Sun’s community manager for OpenOffice.org at OSCON.

Dana is unconvinced that open source supporters should necessarily be doing anything about piracy, noting that “There is no direct financial loss to Open Office when someone has a pirated copy of Microsoft Office. To the extent that BSA enforcement actions cause fear in the market, that just benefits open source, so why join it?”

He also notes that “On the other hand if we helped Oracle enforce its license terms we might accelerate the move to MySQL and Ingres.”

However, one need only remember …

When Sun acquired MySQL and announced that it would invest the resources necessary to position the open source database for mission-critical deployments, I think everyone assumed that the database would eventually become bigger and heavier.

Few would have predicted that we would also see a project that would make the database smaller and lighter, but that is exactly what Drizzle, a new project from Sun’s MySQL director of architecture Brian Aker, is all about.

Drizzle is taking a back-to-the-drawing-board approach to refactoring MySQL by ripping out much of the additional enterprise functionality that has gone into it since version 4.1 and focusing on the demands of a core set of applications.

As Brian …

EnterpriseDB has announced the results (PDF) of its recent survey of open source database usage.

While the company understandably highlights the adoption of PostgreSQL for transaction-intensive applications and its high reliability and performance and scalability EnterpriseDB has done a pretty good job of presenting the results in an unbiased manner.

I couldn’t help feeling that some of the more interesting results are hidden at the end of or buried within EnterpriseDB’s write-up, or even missing entirely, however.

For example, right at the end of its report EnterpriseDB states that “eight three percent have yet to pay for the use of their open source database” which speaks volumes about both the challenge that open …

Last week I wrote about whether Google’s potential acquisitions might be stifled by its focus on its own infrastructure software projects but noted that by releasing App Engine the company was encouraging a wider ecosystem of applications based on its platform.

What I didn’t discuss at the time was the potential risk of application vendors finding themselves locked-in to the App Engine platform. Of course Amazon also has this issue, the potential impact of which was …

Ever since Sun acquired MySQL the rumours have been rife that Josh Berkus, PostgreSQL core team member and Sun’s PostgreSQL lead, would soon be heading out the door.

Josh has now confirmed that he is indeed leaving Sun, but before the doomsayers start writing of Sun’s PostgreSQL support business completely, Josh also notes that Peter Eisentraut is joining the team as PostgreSQL software engineer. Peter has also confirmed his new role.

From the MySQL team, Kaj Arno does the hellos and goodbyes. Losing Josh is significant for Sun’s role in the PostgreSQL community but the quick appointment of Peter indicates that …

I?ve spent the past three weeks profiling open source policies and adoption projects at the 16 nations competing in EURO 2008. Congratulations are due to Spain, which deservedly won the football championship on Sunday with a 1-0 win over Germany.

Just for fun I thought I?d also declare a 2008 Tour of Europe Open Source Champion. In deciding the winner I decided to follow the same organizational structure as the football, so read on to find out which eight nations made it out of the group stages and how I whittled it down to an eventual champion.

If you disagree with any of my decisions feel free to add a comment explaining why, but remember: the referee?s decision is final. Although the football has finished, I?ll also be …

Open source tour of Europe: Germany

To coincide with EURO 2008, I’m embarking on a virtual European tour, taking a quick look at open source policies and deployment projects in the 16 nations that are competing in the tournament.

It doesn?t matter what the competition is, or how well the team has been playing, when it comes to international football tournaments, Germany is always amongst the favourites, and the Germans are in the final once again despite a poor performance in beating Turkey 3-2.

Similarly, when it comes to open source adoption, Germany has a long tradition of leading the world. …

Matt Asay is excited about Red Hat’s Spacewalk project to release the code behind its Red Hat Network Satellite product under an open source license (as he should be, he’s been waiting over a year for it). As well as anticipation, Matt’s excitement can also be attributed to the potential for Spacewalk to become the default management platform for open source software.

As he writes:

“What is the first thing that MySQL and JBoss did to add value to their support subscriptions? Build networks. What, presumably, will be the first things that other open-source companies do? Build networks.

What is the result? A swamp of incompatible service-delivery networks.

…

To coincide with EURO 2008, I’m embarking on a virtual European tour, taking a quick look at open source policies and deployment projects in the 16 nations that are competing in the tournament.

One of the potential favourites for EURO 2008 was always going to be eliminated from the group stages given France, Italy and The Netherlands were all drawn in Group C and it was France that made an early exit following a 2-0 defeat to the Italians last night.

France must also be considered one of the favourites to be crowned EURO 2008 Open Source champion given the number of open source-related policies, projects …