Mergers and acquisitions made the news again this week which, given the Microsoft-Yahoo bid, is like saying the Biblical flood was an interesting weather event. Best MSFT-YHOO one-liner, again from Kara Swisher of Wall Street Journal’s BoomTown: “And while it’s never over until it’s over, let me just say, for Yahoo, it’s over.”

The deal has open source implications too, such as: what becomes of Zimbra? Some opinions:

• Yahoo! buy would give Microsoft ownership of open source e-mail, projects, code. Ugh. (ZDNet Open Source)
• Microsoft and open source: Welcome to the Borg? (Open Road)
• Microsoft’s open-source strategy: A picture is worth a thousand words (All About Microsoft)
• Microsoft/Yahoo Combo Equals Bad News for Web 2.0, Open Source (Intelligent Enterprise)
• MS-Yow!, not MS-Yahoo! for Open Source (open…)
• YahooSoft Bid Shakes The Start-Ups (Forbes.com)
• Yahoo-Microsoft: Corporate Culture Problem Squared (portfolio.com)

We’ll blog more on the current open source M&A boom next week. But what’s your take? Do you think consolidation among open source projects helps or hinders adoption by enterprise open source users? Post your comments below.

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