9 Open Source Companies to Watch

An anonymous reader writes "A look at 9 open source companies to watch, focusing on everything from systems management to portals to apps servers. " Silly bits like where their names come from to less silly bits like how much VC they got and what they actually do. I haven't heard of many of these, but it's encouraging to see a growing number of businesses being built around Open Source.

Comments

N3P - The #1 Open Source company to watch!

[network23]

They missed the #1 Open Source company to watch:

N3P

"N3P offers a brand new, contrasting and intrepid two-year college level training in how to become a successful Project Entrepreneur in Open Source. Our students will learn not only the technical possibilities, but also how to exploit new business opportunities, manage profitable ideas, and create flourishing businesses. The training will focus on how to generate business using open source."

N3P

Re:N3P - The #1 Open Source company to watch!

[DerekLyons]

intrepid two-year college level training in how to become a successful Project Entrepreneur
 
Entrepreneurship is something that, almost by definition, can't be taught, because it involves identifying how to use resources no one had before thought to identify. If you can systematize the method, it's not longer entrepreneurship, but a rote process.

 
Hardly.

• Cooking, for example, is deeply systemized - but it's hardly rote. Considerably experience and knowledge is required to routinely produce great dishes. (I can hand you a recipe - and even with that experience and knowledge you might not be able to duplicate it. My sister, who is a trained chef, cannot (yet) duplicate several of my dishes.)
• Chess is deeply systemized - but it takes considerable skill to know how and when to apply a specific tactic, or a counter to a specific tactic (after learning how to recognize it).
• Military tactics and doctrine are deeply systemized - but it's decidely nontrivial to apply those in real situations. When the SSBN I served on went on patrol, we carried a shelf of books nearly five feet long detailing the tactics, doctrine, and philosophy of conducting a deterrent patrol as well as general submarine operations - but it takes years to master the material and know when to follow 'the book' and when to 'punt' (go your own way).

Now, I'll agree with you that you cannot teach how to identify opportunities - but you can codify how to search for, evaluate, and exploit them.

Besides Red Hat

[lottameez]

Are there any other open source based companies besides Red Hat that are actually profitable? I don't mean this to be flamebait, just wondering.

I was at a conference a few months ago sitting in an Open Source track, and the panel of Open Source vendors basically said that the best chance of success in the open source business was to be renamed Red Hat and to have come about about six years ago.

Re:Besides Red Hat

[2nd Post!]

What is "Open Source based"?

Apple, for example, relies heavily on GCC to make their applications and OS and contributes extensively to the GCC code base. The same with WebKit/Safari/KHTML, though they have been accused of being not quite cooperative in the past, they did get past that. Then their is their use of BSD in their OS, their release of the QuickTime Streaming Server, Bonjour networking protocol, their use of the CUPS print system, and a couple other examples including Apache, Javascript, etc.

Apple of course is not an OS company, since they make money off iPods, MacBooks, and iTMS, but they use OS to their advantage. You don't make money unless you can add value, and because OS is already free and out in the open, Apple does so with services(iTMS), product integration(OS X), and design(iPod).

The question I'd like to see...

[Trillan]

How do they plan to keep making money going forward?

I'm not trying to be negative or cynical, but it's surely the most interesting question as an external observer.

Re: you left out rPath

[ext42fs]

rPath is quite interesting because what's the main hassle to get portability? Interfaces! Have a look at POSIX, glibc, M$.* and realize that those interfaces are big & fat. So, the easiest way to run an application might just be to contain it in its own virtual OS instance. And of course Cleversave is interesting (IMHO) because there is a practically infinite amount of storage out there and GByte prices are declining ever since harddisks were invented...

Not even a particularly good list.

[jd]

I can think of a few dozen Open Source-based companies that are offering far more innovative products, far better products and sometimes even both at the same time. I have no problem with an editor saying "these are worth watching", but I do have a problem with an editor astroturfing. I also have a problem with editors making bold claims without any actual evidence. All we're getting is the corporate handout.

A proposal I made many many years back was to run a league table, where so many points were scored for the release of an open source product, so many points were scored for updating someone else's open source product, so many for closed source products that supported or enhanced the usability of an open source product, etc. The more open source, the more points. Also, the more significant (in terms of power, flexibility, etc) the more points, and the more practical the more points.

The idea was to show who actually was doing work, versus who was merely bragging about it. The idea was also to make major Open Source figures (some of whom have never actually released a product but have contributed to many) just as prominent in the table as major corporations with Really Big Bucks to throw around. It would also show those who are working on making Open Source a key player in the computing world, even if their products are not themselves Open Source.

(Oracle would score points for having put their corporate database on Linux, for example, but it would not be as much as Computer Associates for putting their corporate database - Ingres - not only on Linux but opening up the source as well. Postgresql would score more yet, as it is not only Open Source but regularly maintained.)

Newcomers are at no disadvantage, because whatever REAL added value will show up notwithstanding the newness or the lack of awareness. If there's no added value, then there is nothing there to watch. It's merely a rebadge. If there's added value and this value is constantly added to (which is what a new company should be doing), then it will be a very obvious rapid-riser through the charts.

Proprietary vendors who are wary of opening their high-value major product lines will obviously not score as well, nor should they, but they will be represented as a function of what they have contributed - directly in terms of products, and indirectly in terms of improved usability.

Then, journalists MIGHT have a clue as to what is interesting and what is not. They might also have a clue as to what is significant, what is likely to become "big news" and what is worth the effort of covering.

As it stands, they neither know nor care. Whoever pays the piper calls the tune. Mind you, what I'm aiming for, with this idea, is not to introduce honesty, but rather to give people a copy of the songbook. Let people see for themselves if the tune is any good or is even what it's claimed to be. It would seem to me that an informed userbase will take care of the honesty issue by itself.

Re:db4o

[ClamIAm]

Open-Source Object Database for Java and .NET

With that many buzzwords in its description alone, it has to be good.

Why oh why must open source use such bad names?

[AubieTurtle]

Asterisk is a much better name than Mark Spenser's senior project at Auburn: NADS. I don't think the professor was amused. If I recall correctly, they got the lowest grade in the class. I know some of the names are suppose to be funny but unless you're lucky enough to have a true geek running your IT department (pretty rare), you're not going to be able to use something named Drools or Groovy, no matter how good the product is.

Re:10?

[sanjivaw]

Sahana is not a company. Sahana is an open source project we started in Sri Lanka in response to the Asian Tsunami in Dec '04. It was an immediate response effort (if you want to know more about it check out my blog). Later we re-started it to make it into a truly reusable system rather than a system made for the local situation and its now pretty much the de facto disaster mgmt system. I have no idea why the reporter listed it as a company. Yes I was involved in it (I was one of the many people who worked on it day and nite the days and weeks after the tsunami) and yes I founded WSO2 too but they have nothing to do with each other. Sanjiva.