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Great Bridge Out; Caldera in Trouble

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the black-armband dept.

tim_maroney writes: "CNET's news.com gives us a pair of open source disaster movies today. Great Bridge, an open source database maker which refused a bid from Red Hat earlier this year, will lay off 38 of 41 employees and close its doors. Caldera, a seller of Linux and UNIX versions, announced layoffs, plummeting revenues, and a reverse stock split intended to allow it to be relisted. Not a happy day for fans of open source business models."

3 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Open Source Jet Engines by standards · · Score: 5, Informative

    Jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney learned long ago: sell your engines at a loss. The real money is in service.

    At the time, IBM happened to be piloting System R (precursor to DB2) at Pratt & Whitney. And they learned there: Virtually give away the software, and make money on your services. And that's why IBM global services is such a powerful consulting force today. Global Services is the real profit arm of IBM.

    But IBM ain't dumb. Of course, IBM global services prefers IBM products, but they'll support Solaris and Linux and VB apps too.

    And that's the rub. Most Open Source-centric companies don't have deep pockets, but only support a narrow field of Open Source software.

    The fact is guys, it's hard to support 50 new employees on a brand new, growing marketplace. It would be wiser to support existing commercial products while pushing your own [open source] agenda. Heck, that's the successful IBM GS model (sans the Open Source bit).

    Grow up guys, get off your high horse and step into the real world. You can't start a company hoping that all your customers will knock on your door supporting your agenda. But you can can fight for your utopian dream by FIRST supporting your customers, and only SECONDLY by showing your customers why your ideals are best for THEM.

  2. Re:Great Bridge by Ridge2001 · · Score: 3, Informative
    Anyone know how many, if any, of the development team were employed by Great Bridge?

    From an interview with Bruce Momjian last year:

    So for example, one of the first things we decided was that no more than a few of the core developers could be hired by one company. We clearly stated this to Great Bridge. We did not want a case where they basically just came in and hired everybody, because people outside the group would say "Well, who are we working for now? Is this an open source project, or is this just Great Bridge working on Postgres?" So it was a very deliberate thing to say that only a few people would be involved with Great Bridge.

    ...

    We have three core developers hired by Great Bridge.

  3. MySQL AB's business model by martenmickos · · Score: 3, Informative


    We fully believe in open source and in business built on it (ENTIRELY open source). So far it has worked outnicely.

    Our model differs from the one of Great Bridge. We maintain control of the database kernel so that we can sell commercial licences to those numerous companies who need a non-GPL licence. We also have a strong and widely known trademark. MySQL AB offers support done by the core developers. This allows us to offer a total product and service package that is in line with the open source / free software thinking and also makes sound business sense.

    Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB