Red Hat is celebrating the 10 year anniversary of its initial public offering. An anniversary to be proud of for Red Hat, but one that has given The VAR Guy pause for thought about the relative success of open source in the past 10 years.
“Would anyone have predicted that no additional open source companies would launch IPOs over the next decade? Ten years without an open source IPO … amazing and somewhat depressing for open source business advocates,” writes the VAR Guy.
It is somewhat depressing that there are not more public open source vendors. However, the statement that there have been no open source IPOs is simply not true. In fact there have been six open source IPOs since Red Hat.
These are covered in detail in our recent CAOS report, Open to Investment, but the edited version is as follows:
VA Linux/VA Software/SourceForge (Nasdaq:LNUX)
The next open source vendor to go public after Red Hat was VA Linux, which was then offering Intel-based servers designed to run Linux. VA Linux became VA Software in December 2001, having moved away from system hardware, and focused its attention on the SourceForge.net development repository and the SourceForge Enterprise development product, as well as media services such as Slashdot, Linux.com and Freshmeat. In 2007, VA Software sold its SourceForge Enterprise Edition software product to CollabNet and changed its name to SourceForge Inc.
Caldera/SCO Group (in Chapter 7)
The last open source vendor to go public before the dot-com bust was Linux distributor Caldera. The company acquired the Unix assets of Santa Cruz Operation in 2000 and changed its name to The SCO Group in 2002. The less said about it after that the better, probably.
Turbolinux (OSE :3777)
Having canceled its IPO in late 2001, Turbolinux eventually found its way to the stock market in September 2005 via an IPO on the Japanese Osaka Securities Exchange. Between those events, the Japanese Linux distributor was owned by Software Research Associates and then Livedoor. Turbolinux’s shares continue to be traded on the Osaka Securities Exchange.
Mandrakesoft/Mandriva (Euronext: FR0004159382)
French Linux distributor Mandrakesoft, which listed its shares on the Euronext Marche Libre in July 2001. Mandrakesoft acquired Brazilian Linux distributor Conectiva in February 2005 and changed its name to Mandriva before purchasing desktop Linux specialist Lycoris in July of the same year
Trolltech (acquired)
Linux application tools vendor Trolltech made its name with its Qt application development platform and Qtopia mobile device platform. The company made its debut on the Norwegian Oslo Bors in July 2006. In January 2008, it was acquired by Nokia for $153m and renamed Qt Software.
Sourcefire (Nasdaq:FIRE)
Sourcefire, which makes internal security products and sponsors the open source Snort intrusion detection engine, made its debut on the Nasdaq in March 2007, pricing its offering at $15 a share, giving it an opening market capitalization of $350m.
There have admittedly been just a handful of IPOs involving open source vendors. The lack of IPOs is due in part to the relative immaturity of commercial open source business strategies, the attractiveness of open source vendors as acquisition targets (MySQL was on the brink of an IPO when it was acquired) and the fact that the trajectory of these vendors has been impacted by two global economic crises (the dot com bust put pay to the IPOs of Linuxcare and Turbolinux, while there are a couple of vendors that might have been in a position to go public this year or next were it not for the current malaise.
Our CAOS report includes a list of the vendors we think are best positioned for a run at an IPO in the 12-24 months after the downturn ends.
PlanetMySQL Voting: Vote UP / Vote DOWN