CNET: Linux start-up to take on database market

[ Thanks to George
Mitchell for this link. ]

“As chief financial officer of media company Landmark
Communications, Ritter watched his company miss out on a golden
opportunity to invest in Linux software seller Red Hat way before
its successful initial public offering. Now he hopes to catch the
second wave of the open-source software trend.”

“Ritter is leaving his Landmark job to become chief executive
officer of Great Bridge, a subsidiary that will try to do with the
PostgreSQL database software what Red Hat did with Linux. Although
Ritter declined to detail the company’s business model, it will
involve popularizing the database and then selling services and
support for it. Later, the company is likely to expand to selling
the database bundled with other open-source software.”

“Great Bridge, though consisting of only four employees today,
has grand ambitions, including a planned expansion to 120 employees
and the ultimate possibility of going public, Ritter said. But
the biggest challenge will be taking on giants such as Oracle, IBM,
Microsoft, Informix and Sybase, each of which have their own
proprietary database programs.“

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