MySQL, JBoss, Zimbra...What is an open-source company worth?
,----[ Quote ]
| JBoss? 2005 revenue was $17 million and bookings were roughly $27 million.
| Red Hat acquired JBoss in 2006 for $350 million. This represents a multiple
| of 20.6 times trailing 12-month revenue or 13 times 2005 bookings. That's not
| a wide divergence from the valuation multiple MySQL got (but both are a lot
| better than the multiple that BEA Systems got for its stock from Oracle).
|
| Zimbra? $6 million in bookings that fed into a $350 million valuation, though
| it's probably better to use the $20 million in bookings it was on track to
| hit in 2007 before the acquisition. At that number, it's a 17.5 multiple on
| bookings projecting to the end of 2007. More likely, it was a multiple on
| bookings in the range of 12 to 15. In other words, very close to the same
| multiple for MySQL and JBoss.
`----
http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9853461-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Putting a value on MySQL
,----[ Quote ]
| Since Sun announced its acquisition of MySQL for $1bn, there have been some
| suggestions that perhaps Sun paying too much for the open source database
| vendor. Calculating the multiple for MySQL has proved difficult because there
| are no official figures to go on, and also because many of the unofficial
| figures that are floating around are contradictory.
`----
http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2008/01/18/putting-a-value-on-mysql/
Related:
The Failure of Open Source Business Advocacy
,----[ Quote ]
| The consistent and often exclusive focus on cost of acquisition as a
| competitive advantage is a key factor leading into unsustainable and
| sub-optimal deployment of open source. It is often the IT budget rather than
| the longer range IT strategy which provides an entry point for free software
| in the enterprise.
`----
http://sancairodicopenhagen.com/joe/failure_of_open_source_business_advocacy
Open Source CMS offers great benefits to scientific collaborative research
,----[ Quote ]
| Researchers need a platform to support transnational scientific
| collaboration. Paul Henning Krogh explains how collaborative
| software as Plone brings outstanding benefits to EU research
| projects.
`----
http://www.zeapartners.org/articles/collaborative-research006
Do You Work Better If You're Working For Free?
,----[ Quote ]
| After we finish the next issue of Release 2.0, we'll be turning our
| attention to a series of open source reports, the first of which
| we'll be unveiling at OSCON. Another project I'm working on --
| one outside O'Reilly Radar that has nothing to do with technology
| -- makes me wonder about how different groups consider open source
| projects.
`----
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/do_you_work_bet.html
Why open source is ready for the enterprise: beyond free stuff
,----[ Quote ]
| Open source is certainly hot among the tech community, but if you
| mention the concept to IT leaders in the enterprise environment,
| they tend to immediately cringe. The inference being that "free
| stuff" can't possibly match the quality of products you pay for
| -- and the "DIY approach" is not manageable or secure enough for
| large enterprises. This kind of rash write-off plainly misses
| the mark!
`----
http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=8034
Unpaid users more valuable than paid users?
,----[ Quote of quote ]
| The professors found, for instance, that the value of each nonpaying
| customer (buyer) was actually slightly higher than the value of each
| paying customer (seller) - even though there were far more buyers
| than sellers in the company's marketplace. (To put it another way,
| the network effect of a buyer on a seller was far stronger than the
| network effect of a seller on a buyer.)
`----
http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/03/unpaid_users_mo.html
Free software... and why we avoid it.
,----[ Quote ]
| Open source software has finally come of age, and thousands of
| Australians are now benefiting from professional-looking programs
| that haven't cost them a penny. Too good to be true? Most certainly not.
|
| [...]
|
| Yet despite the seemingly obvious advantages of open source programs,
| paid-for commercial software remains in the ascendancy. So why do we
| still pay for software when high-quality free alternatives are no more
| than a download away? Is open source plagued with support, security and
| reliability issues, or are we being duped by a commercial software
| industry desperate to cling on to its profit margins? This feature lifts
| the lid on all the reasons we still pay for software, and asks whether
| it's time for a change in attitude. But first let's consider how the
| open source movement came to be.
`----
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/feature.aspx?CIaFID=1515
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