Sign of the times, some 30 open source software companies were purchased for more than $1 billion in 2007 according to 451 Group.
The mergers and acquisitions are accelerating in the open source sector. Wired Magazine citing consulting firm 451 Group reports that the number of sales doubled between 2005 and 2007. The pace is likely to be kept this year. In January, Sun Microsystems announced the purchase of open source pioneer MySQL for $1 billion; open source development players Covalent and SpringSource merged; and Nokia agreed to pay $153 million for the open source mobile-software maker Trolltech. Confirming overall open source strong demand in the public sector, the European Commission announced it would take “a more pro-active approach to its own use of open source” last March.
