Keeping it in the

Open-Source Family"> "The fact that Red Hat has had the success it has as an open-source company to generate the kind of cash that it has, as well as the stock price and market evaluation it has, is tremendous," Cohen said, adding that the fact that JBoss has also been as successful with an open-source model "is terrific in its own right." Asked whether it was better for the industry that Red Hat had acquired JBoss rather then the much talked about potential Oracle acquisition of the company, Cohen said it was substantially better from a business model and customer adoption angle that an open-source company be the acquirer. Read more here about HPs global support for the entire JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite of products. "Lets face it, Red Hats revenue, profits and cash to hand is generated by customer sales, while the stock price is reflected in customer confidence and the companys expected future growth," he said. While an Oracle acquisition of JBoss would have been good in its own right, Cohen said, the fact that Red Hat was big enough to buy another open-source firm at a large price "is what is really telling." But Tier 1 Researchs Donahue notes that while the move will help solidify Red Hats leadership in enterprise Linux, "we cant help but have the feeling that the transaction seemingly was put together quickly perhaps after Oracle and JBoss could not come to terms." The upshot of the acquisition is that JBoss would clearly stay in the open-source space and would significantly expand Red Hats portfolio beyond its core Linux server market, creating a revenue and earnings upside, and helping solidify the company as the primary commercial open-source software vendor. "But, we could argue that the transaction really didnt need to occur from a functional development standpoint. Red Hat and JBoss are already working together, and traditionally operating systems and middleware develop independently," he said. Click here to read more about how JBoss CEO Marc Fleury said he had no plans to sell JBoss in the near future. But the transaction would give Red Hat better competitive positioning against other Linux distributors as the company could now make the case for a more complete open-source portfolio, Donahue said. But Novell said its model of allowing customers to choose the best mix of proprietary and open-source technologies based on open standards is still the right way to go. Read more here about enterprises reaping the rewards of open-source growth. Company spokesman Bruce Lowry told eWEEK that the Waltham, Mass., firm is committed to delivering a full open-standards-based infrastructure stack to its customers and stood by its model "to build, buy and partner to deliver and support that stack." Novell will continue to offer and support the components of the stack that customers request, he said. Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest open-source news, reviews and analysis.