Open Source Activity

SpringSource has purchased Covalent Technologies, a leader in support and services for Apache software projects.

Two weeks ago, MySQL was acquired by Sun. This week, Covalent Technologies has been acquired. It shows that there is true value in free and open-source software (FOSS). I once heard that asking how companies make money "giving away" open-source software is like asking how companies make money with the Internet. They make money by using it. In the FOSS world, companies make money through the services and support opportunities that surround the software.

The CEOs of both companies discuss the both the acquisition and the rapid rise and adoption of Spring and Tomcat on their respective blogs, found at (http://blog.springsource.com/ and http://blog.covalent.net/roller/covalent/). You can also read the press release at http://www.springsource.com/web/guest/2008/covalentaquisition.

Some interesting facts about the acquisition:
-64% of corporate enterprises worldwide run Tomcat
-93% of enterprises that run Spring also run Tomcat
-Both companies have a very large presence with Fortune 500 companies

Posted by Eric Bruno at 04:31 PM  Permalink