- Sun Microsystems buys MySQL AB for $1 Billion (yes, that’s ONE BILLION DOLLARS)
- Acquia (a Drupal company) gets a large chunk of change (no, actually that was last month in FOSS, but it’s part of the picture.)
- OpenAds, an open source ad server (very cool) just got tons of $ in financing.
- A company that provides services for Ruby on Rails got a bunch of funding.
So what does this mean for you, o struggling nonprofit organization? Open source is becoming mainstream, and people (that is, people with money) are starting to throw big bucks in the direction of open source projects, and companies that provide services for open source projects. This is going to make these projects better, and make support for them more available. Because these applications are not proprietary, and anyone can get their hands on them, and install and use them, this means that nonprofits get the benefit. Because of the nature of open source, more money in the open source ecosystem is a good thing, and it is my belief that unlike “voodoo economics” this will actually be a tide that lifts all boats.
