Open Source: It's an Ecosystem

BusinessWeek has published two interesting articles on open source.  In the first, Open Source: Now it's an Ecosystem, they look at the growing momentum that companies such as SugarCRM, JasperSoft, MySQL and JBoss are acheving in the market place.  We've always thought of MySQL as being a database platform and so it is very encouraging to see open source application companies become part of the overall ecosystem. 

In the second article, Rimer's Rules for Open Source, BusinessWeek interviews Danny Rimer a VC investor from Index Ventures and he discusses a set of rules for evaluating open source companies based on Community, Commoditization and Price Cushion. Rimer, an investor in MySQL, would be the pre-eminent open source venture guy in Silicon Valley except for the fact that he's located in London.  Rimer made news in the last few weeks for his early investment in Skype, which was acquired by eBay for a few billion dollars.  Rimer has been busily investing in open source companies, including MySQL, Zend and others building out a significant portfolio of companies that have a large community of users.

• BusinessWeek: Open Source: Now it's an Ecosystem
• BusinessWeek: Rimer's Rules for Open Source