OStatic

My first thought when I saw that OpenText is buying Vignette, one of the oldest providers of content and portal management software, for $310 million, was what a huge player Vignette was as the commercial web ramped up. It was founded in 1995, when all businesses were suddenly forced to build online presences, wrestle with HTML, online collaboration and other new concepts. The number of big businesses that run sites and intranets on Vignette is still long, including Disney, Wachovia, Martha Stewart, Fox NewsDigital, and more. Open source content management solutions have continuously taken business away from proprietary players like Vignette, though, especially as the free and low cost platforms have matured.?

OStatic runs on Drupal, for example, a completely free platform. It works fine for us, and we never need to pay for support or services. As we covered recently in our interview with Alfresco Software Chairman John Newton, Alfresco is doing extremely well with its open source enterprise content management platforms, so we asked the folks there about the meaning of the Vignette acquisition.

Today, SpringSource, which makes the Spring Framework, the leading open source application framework for Java, announced that it has acquired Hyperic, which supplies enterprise application management and monitoring software. The move could lead to much deeper entrechment for SpringSource in enterprises, because Hyperic's flagship Hyperic HQ software troubleshoots and monitors hardware, networks, virtualization, cloud environments and massively scalable applications.

Hyperic's open source software is used for monitoring large enterprise MySQL deployments, among other things. Many retail, financial services, manufacturing and technology companies already use SpringSource to manage the lifecyles of Java applications. But With Hyperic under its wing, SpringSource can potentially start to manage many more critical aspects of enterprise networks, and? ambitious cloud applications.

I can safely say when I covered the speculation that IBM and Sun were wrapping up the finer points of the acquisition Friday, I figured that if there was anything left to say come Monday, it would deal with idiosyncracies of the agreed-upon terms. Even though the announcement is imminent reports were not officially sanctioned by IBM or Sun, there was no reason to believe the sources were dishonest about the information they gave. It still doesn't seem there was dishonesty, or that these sources made wildly off-base assumptions about what was to come. It seemed as though IBM's purchase of Sun Microsystems was set to proceed, until late Saturday evening, when IBM and Sun broke off negotiations, according to Bloomberg.

There had been much debate about how an IBM acquisition would affect Sun's open source efforts. As those questions move even further into the hypothetical realm, far more troubling questions loom about Sun's next potential buyer -- or its choice to weather the storm on its own.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that IBM is currently in talks to purchase Sun Microsystems. The acquisition is not a foregone conclusion, due in part to the very different corporate cultures in the companies. Some believe this tension will ultimately help both companies succeed, if they can just get through the talks.

The acquisition could take place as early as this week, and it is speculated that IBM could pay over $6.5 billion for Sun. Sun's recent financials have been more than a little disappointing, and this purchase would take a toll on IBM's profits in the short term. Business isn't solely about the short term, however, and I can't help but agree with the WSJ, CNet's Matt Asay, and at least a few of those involved in the talks that this acquisition would be a positive one for IBM, Sun, and open source in general.

Today Fixstars Corporation announced it has acquired Terra Soft Solutions, the company behind Yellow Dog Linux. Fixstars has created a new subsidiary to manage the Terra Soft employees, products, and offices.

Fixstars provides application development and optimization tools for Cell Broadband Engine multi-core processors. This makes the acquisition of Terra Soft fitting from the historical standpoint, and promising for Yellow Dog's future.