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Open Source Venture Fund Unveiled

Posted by timothy on from the party-like-it's-1999 dept.

prostoalex writes "Over the next three years Simula Labs will finance 6-8 open source startups with $10-15 million it got from venture capitalists, News.com says. The venture financing enterprise is mostly interested in hiring the founders of the project and selling the services based around product infrastructure. LogicBlaze and Mergere are among the first startups who got financing from Simula Labs, and it looks like a logo that incorporates orange and brown is required before you apply."

1 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. The transition from project to services by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wonder how these ventures will work out. The transition from being an independent OSS project to being a captive part of a services organization can't be easy. Holding customers' hands as they deploy last-year's release is very different from writing the next bit of cool code.

    The solution will be to find a management staff that can balance software development tasks versus providing services -- keeping both the project personnel and the customers happy. I'm guessing that they will do this by putting project people into "guru" positions and doing the bulk of the sales and service work with an army of hired underlings.

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.