web sounds:
They're Baack
2005-04-28
The Good Ol' Days
Some years ago, technology journalist Amy Harmon traveled from Manhattan to MIT to attend the first Free Software Award ceremony at the Media Lab. While in Cambridge, she took the opportunity to interview Bob Young. The resulting N.Y. Times article, with a headline For Sale: Free Operating System helped stimulate Wall Street's interest in the then pre-IPO Red Hat.
Higher up the Stack
Recently, publicists working with venture capitalists (VC) and their portfolio companies are issuing press releases announcing funding for companies based on the Open Source business model which has picked up steam again along Sand Hill Road. This week, Gary Rivlin writes that the good ole days may be returning for a new generation of start-up companies with products and services that reside further up the software "stack."
On the track
SpikeSource received its start-up financing from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
GroundWork Open Source Solutions landed cash from Canaan Partners and Mayfield Fund.
MySQL AB, based in Sweden, is backed by Index Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Benchmark Capital, which once held a 5 percent stake in Red Hat. MySQL has a VC-friendly business strategy utilizing the dual licensing business model, releasing software under the GPL and a closed license.
In Atlanta, JBoss is financed by Matrix Partners, Accel Partners and Intel Capital.
VC, who once walked the aisles of a .org pavilion in search of engineering talent, now have a growing organizational infrastructure and open source network to use. Last year, Seattle's Voyager Capital, joined the Open Source Development Labs in an effort to keep its finger on the pulse of the new shared technology and business plans.