Open Source Solutions

There's a blank space in the agenda for this time slot. A panel has been brought together to discuss if open source companies can survive the M&A. The panel includes Harold Goldberg, CEO, Zend Technologies, Ben Sabrin, VP, Sales & Business Development, Appcelerator, Zack Urlocker, EVP of Products, MySQL, and Rex Wang, VP, Product Marketing, Oracle.

The community, the employees, the product - everything could change.

Zend and MySQL are strong partners, as over 50% of development on top of MySQL is in PHP. Sun acquiring MySQL initially was upsetting, but more from the standpoint that the world needs strong, independent open source companies. The two companies are dedicated to supporting the overlapping communities through the transition and to maintain the direction of MySQL. Sun and MySQL, whether still being in the honeymoon period or indicative of long term cultures, are having open, supportive conversations.

Red Hat and JBoss had no such conversations, and the cultural shift was very negative, though the results may be positive.

Harold brought out that there are three types of M&A: acquire a business, consolidate markets, purchase a piece of technology. Open Source doesn't make this different.

Sleepycat was acquired by Oracle two years ago, and it was announced at OSBC 2006, and thus has been the longest in the transition. Sleepycat personnel were integrated with comparable groups within Oracle, e.g. Sleepycat engineers joined database engineering, marketing joined marketing, sales formed with sales folk from other recent Oracle acquisitions, a new sales group focused on embedded databases and small devices. Though this integration and dispersal happened over many months, and some processes, such as the release cycle are still done the Sleepycat way and may never transition to the Oracle way.

There are gradations of M&A transition & integration policies, ranging from complete absorption into the new culture, to maintaining the acquired company intact while the acquiring company learns the new business. Most acquisitions fail. It's too early to tell how these acquisitions will run, but a lot depends on the M&A experience and competency of the acquiring company.