“Throughout 2006, Linux and open source continued their march
toward the mainstream of enterprise software. Perhaps no one event
exemplified this trend more than Red Hat’s acquisition of JBoss in
April. With JBoss’s Java technologies under its wing, Red Hat is no
longer merely a Linux vendor; it’s become an open source
powerhouse, able to offer its customers a complete application
software stack.“The year’s successes for open source did not come without
conflict, however. The roster of companies involved in open source
now reads like a list of the world’s largest enterprise software
vendors. For once, key open source projects are backed with real
dollars, but there’s also an unfortunate downside…”