Article Source The Open Road
August 12, 2009, 2:38 pm
August 12, 2009, 2:38 pm
Others and I have made much of VMware’s acquisition of SpringSource for $420 million, but one crucial point has been overlooked: this is the first big acquisition of a company that depends on the Apache license.
Yes, we’ve seen smaller acquisitions of open-source companies that rely on Apache-style licensing. IBM acquired Gluecode (Geronimo project), SpringSource bought Covalent (Tomcat), Oracle acquired Sleepycat (Sleepycat, BSD license), and there have likely been others that I’m simply not remembering.
But the big, head-turning deals? GNU General Public License (GPL). Every one of them…
