"Polese, founder of Marimba and formerly the public face of Java for Sun Microsystems, is now back in the limelight -- this time as CEO of SpikeSource, an open-source services company catering to corporate customers. And just like during the early days of the Web, Polese believes she's at the front of something big," reports CNet. The interview includes this:
Is the idea of SpikeSource to make it look like there's a commercial outfit like an IBM or Microsoft behind a set of open-source products?
Yeah. What is sort of interesting right now is that IT developers, architects and chief information officers are aggressively adopting open source. The problem has become how to manage the abundance. There are more than 85,000 different open-source projects today.
All the things that IT is used to, like support documentation, reliability, road maps--none of that exists for open source when you start moving beyond a single component. When you start talking about actually integrating the components into applications, there is no sort of product management for open source. That is where we see an opportunity.
Comment: SourceLabs is another company set up recently to do the same sort of thing, as CNet reports. SourceLab is backed by Brad Silverberg, the ex-Microsoftie who took Windows from a $50 million business to a $3.5 billion business in five years. However, Bradsi isn't as good looking as Kim....
