OStatic

Reports came in from the blogsphere earlier this morning concerning layoffs at Novell. The news immediately follows Sun Microsystems' announcement that it is laying off about 18 percent of its employees, which leaves only Red Hat as the major public open source company not to announce layoffs. Matt Asay got the skinny from Novell officials, and apparently the layoffs affect fewer than 100 people. (This post was updated after earlier reports that the layoffs affected many more people.)

As the final days of 2008 drew to a close and predictions about open source in 2009 began to spread around the web, I predicted that this year will bring many more mergers and acquisitions among commercial open source companies. I based this primarily on extremely low valuations. So far I haven't been proven right, but researchers at The 451 Group are backing the concept up. Interestingly, two of the public open source companies that I mentioned as possible acquisition targets--Red Hat and Sun--are seen as potential acquirers in The 451 Group report. Here are some thoughts on their report and some notable data from them.

I have to nod in agreement as The VAR Guy laments the complete absence of any open source companies--large or small--as the 2009 National Retail Federation Convention gets underway in New York.? He makes the point that this is a massive mistake for open source companies and their channel partners, which is true. Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service? is an example of the kind of service that should be put right in front of retailers' faces, and SUSE Linux already runs in Wal-Mart, Office Depot and many other chains. Red Hat ISVs create applications for retailers left and right. But did either of these companies show up at the convention? No, and this points to an open source problem: tunnel vision.

In its Quixotic effort to never admit defeat, the SCO Group has (again) filed reorganization plans in Bankruptcy Court. It has been a drawn out procedure that first raised the ire of the open source world, and later the courts, as appeals were filed and reorganization plans were rejected and resubmitted.

The SCO Group is giving it another shot, this time proposing it can rise from its ashes by selling some of its assets in a public auction. The money made from these sales will contribute to the operating budget and fund the OpenServer product line and mobile business development. A press release issued earlier says that there are several investment groups interested in a sell off, but even so, they'll still have to wait to hear what the Court says.

From the Bleak Predictions Department, ChannelInsider has a slideshow up of 12 tech companies that may not survive 2009. The list of companies comes from solution providers that ChannelInsider surveyed, and includes some surprisingly big and powerful players. It also includes two leading, public open source companies. Who made the list?