Open Enterprise Interview: Bernard Dalle, Index Ventures

On Open Enterprise blog.

Alfresco Gets Funding for Growth

On Open Enterprise blog.

Less Dosh for OSS...And So?

On Open Enterprise blog.

Web 2.0 is Dead, Long Live Openness

An interesting post from Tom Foremski, who, even if he doesn't always grok the underlying dynamics of open source and its offshoots, is certainly plugged into the right people in Silicon Valley, and is very sharp about spotting trends there:

Whenever I meet with VCs I've noticed that there is a growing distaste for Web 2.0 startups. The "Web 2.0" term, in connection with a startup, and as a collection of concepts, is very tired in this community.

I think this is good news. Although I've used "Web 2.0" as a shorthand for a group of sites/services/technologies, what is much more important are the driving forces behind them. And those, quite simply, are openness, sharing and the Net-based, distributed methodology pioneered by open source. The more we concentrate on those core currents underneath, and the less on the trendy froth on top, the better.

An Opening for OpenAds

Business open source just keeps on getting stronger:

Openads, a supplier of free software used by Web sites to manage online ad campaigns, has received $5 million in initial funding, bolstering it to prepare for increasing competition globally with Google Inc.

...

London-based Openads was founded as a grassroots, open-source software development project in 1999. It has signed up 25,000 Web site publishers in more than 100 countries and 20 languages.

Two in a Single Stroke

This is cool: further proof not only that patents in general, and software patents in particular are stupid, but that at least some VCs are amoral parasites:

Earlier this year, we wrote about one such fund, Altitude Capital Partners who had quietly invested in Visto, but made it clear that it really only cared about companies who had patents that could be used in lawsuits. John points us to a Forbes article that talks about Altitude and other private equity funds that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars solely to support patent lawsuits. In other words, if you thought things were bad in the past, they're about to get much, much worse. Once again, almost all of these lawsuits aren't about protecting the interests of an inventor at all.

O rose, thou art sick.

Big Blue's Cunning Ploy

Clever:

IBM, the world's largest computer company, has a successful venture capital group operating in the heart of Silicon Valley, yet it makes no investments in startup companies. Instead, it tells VC firms what types of startups it might want to acquire and waits for the Silicon Valley innovation machine to do the rest.

OS VC Round-up

It's clear that serious venture capital is starting to flow into open source start-ups, but sometimes it's hard to stay on top of how much and to whom. Here's a handy round-up of who's got what recently.

Vyatta Gets VC Dosh

I've written about Vyatta, a company producing an open-source router, before. Now it's got some serious VC dosh: you don't have to be clairvoyant to see that this company is going to be very big. Starting queueing for shares now. (Via Enterprise Open Source Magazine.)

Another Boring Open Source Success. Yawn.

So the open IP telephony company Digium scores $13.8 million in VC dosh. Yawn.

What's most amazing about this announcement is how extraordinarily boring it is. Digium was obviously well placed to get VC money, because it's already a huge success. Investing in it is a complete no-brainer (lucky Matrix that somehow convinced it to accept). And all this sheer and utter boringness is yet another measure of how successful open source has become. Of course it gets VC money, of course it's profitable, of course it will wipe out the opposition.

Next question?

The Blue Frog Takes the King's Shilling

I've an article over on Linux Journal that looks at dual licensing. The issue of how you might make money out of open source software is important, not just to the coders but also to the users. If the former don't feel that they've received enough payback - of whatever kind - they are likely to move on, and the latter will then suffer.

So I was interested to see the news that everybody's favourite blue frog - Azureus - has taken some venture capital money to turn "legit", or at least corporate. There's no reason why this should have any downside for the free version: presumably they aim to produce paid-for, customised versions for content producers etc. In fact, it might even help educate the latter that BitTorrent is not synonymous with evil.

Here We Go Again...

Why am I not suprised by this?

“It appears as if the venture capital industry is slowly ratcheting up investment levels for the first time in four years, and these increases seem to be directed in a prudent manner,” Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association said in a press release. That might have been true, but the recent trend of big money investments shows that prudence might be giving away to old-fashioned avarice.

Om Malik makes clear why the next dotcom delirium is inevitable:

Before they can go out and raise cash for new funds, many of the firms have to invest the remnant money from their circa 2000-2001 funds. Otherwise, Limited Partners might be asking them the difficult question: Why should I give you more cash when you are sitting on a pile already? A good example would be Oak Investment Partners, which raised $2.56 billion to become the largest venture capital fund ever.

In other words, there is simply too much greedy money in the system, some of it left over from the last VC feeding frenzy at the trough, which in the coming days absolutely must be spent, whether or not it makes sense. Did anyone say bubble?

The Internet? It's a Series of (You)Tubes

Is it just me, or has the entire VC industry gone utterly bonkers over Internet video? It seems that every day there's a new YouTube me-too launch on TechCrunch - with the usual "I think it's got potential" that seems to accompany every such story - and now, thanks to IP Democracy, we have a neat little table that suggests that VCs are, indeed, barking:

we take a look at the amount of venture money that has flowed into IP video start-ups over the past year and find that over $600 million has been invested in the YouTubes and Sling Medias and MobiTVs of the world since around this time last year. Our list (see table below) doesn’t even include investments for web sites or technology companies that focus a lot — but not primarily — on IP video efforts.

I realise that the Internet is a series of tubes, but as far as video is concerned, things really seem to be going down them.

End of the World Nigh: VCs Clueful on Patents

And now for some good news about patents - no really. Judging by this article on the excellent Techdirt, a few of the brighter VCs are starting to get the message about software patents. Next thing you know, even the lawyers will join in - then we'll know that the end of the world is really nigh.