“Why it’s worth watching: Open source code is storming into
information technology shops. Sendmail is poised to convert these
users into paying customers.”
“Burn money: Sendmail got going with $18 million from angel
investors and technology partners such as Sun Microsystems Inc.
founders Andy Bechtolsheim and Bill Joy, Compaq Computer Corp.
Chairman Ben Rosen and Novell Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt. It just
secured an additional $35 million from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
& Co. in New York and two other venture capital firms.”
“Prior Foundation
Unlike most start-ups, Sendmail inherited a huge installed base
when it formed as a private company in March 1998. Since Eric
Allman developed the Sendmail message-transfer agent at the
University of California, Berkeley, in 1981, literally thousands of
developers have tweaked and improved the code and thousands of
users have made it the basis for storing and forwarding Internet
e-mail.”