Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s newly buzz-making CEO thanks to the company’s $1B US acquisition of MySQL last month, gave the keynote at this week’s SugarCRM conference. In his keynote, as reported by InfoWorld, Schwartz identified a key reason why his company scooped up the widely-used open source database firm: distribution.

“What was attractive was how profound their distribution was,” Schwartz said. MySQL offers access to about 11 million deployments around the world, and Sun began to see MySQL delivering real value, innovation, and choice, he said. MySQL sells services and support for its database.

If you’ve been wondering about all those other open source acquisitions, wonder no more. The value is in the distros.

Paying less than $100 US for each deployment — make that ‘prospective paying customer who is already using the product’ — Sun has access to millions of potential customers for Sun services, other software products and hardware. That’s not a bad price for a solid customer lead in a business where the long-term value of any enterprise customer is measured in six or seven figures, and it ignores the very real value of MySQL’s current annual service and support revenue (estimated at $100M US) and harder-to-quantify value of its intellectual property.

So maybe we’ve got an algorithm for an open source project valuation. For example, Yahoo’s acquisition of Zimbra last September cost big Y $350M US. According to a Wall Street Journal story on Zimbra in November 2006, they had some four million users. Allowing for some shrinkage, that’s quite close to the $100 per deployment for MySQL.

But for all you FOSS project leaders out there who are running to check your download and registration numbers, keep in mind MySQL and Zimbra had “commercial” versions and paying customers prior to the big buyout. So don’t count on pocketing a Franklin for every download just yet. Still, a community can dream, can’t it?

Got some other ideas for valuing an open source project? Post your ideas and comments below.

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This sales and marketing automation tool launched updated on-demand hosted and download-and-run open source versions this week. While ComputerWorld says the company came out of “stealth” mode this week (so how did they get to version 3?), it’s been operating since Q2 2007 and is currently in the EOS Directory candidate queue. The tool, which combines web metrics, lead generation and management capabilities for enterprise users, is targeting open source firms as early adopters. More info:

• LoopFuse OneView 3.0 Announced (LoopFuse)
• JBoss alumni launch open-source startup (ComputerWorld)
• Can LoopFuse crack the open source conversion conundrum? (451 CAOS Theory)
• “Stealth mode” Loopfuse to be unveiled (Open Road)
• Open sourcing marketing: Loopfuse goes live (Open Sources 17 Apr 07)

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More than one person has moaned aloud at the thought of having to review — or worse yet, update — a Microsoft Project file. Sure, there are online and downloadable Project file viewers, and plenty of competitors in the project management application space. But most of them cost money, have limited features or are otherwise wonky in some way.

Until now. Welcome Projity’s OpenProj 1.0, a full-featured cross-platform open source project management application that reads/writes MS-Project .mpp, Project 2003 .XML and Projity’s own .pod files. This is no trial version or crippleware, it’s the real thing, and it comes in Linux, Unix, Mac (PPC/X86) and, yes, Windows versions. As others point out, this could be a welcome addition to the OpenOffice suite of enterprise open source productivity applications.

I have just started tinkering with OpenProj — the 1.0 version launched recently — and so far, I’m impressed. According to the OpenProj site, so are the top guns at places like Sourceforge, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Sabayon Linux and Novell.

Right now it’s an EOS Directory candidate, but we’re looking to rate it and add it to the directory. If you’ve got comments about OpenProj, add them below. I’ll keep checking to see if SteveB from Redmond posts a thumbs-down comment. Then we’ll know for sure it’s the real thing!

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Here are some of the open source-related headlines this week — so far:

• Sun shines on open source database MySQL — Sun Micro Acquires MySQL for $1B (Blogging Stocks)
• MySQL deal could stave off darkness at Sun — Buying MySQL Could Save Sun (Seeking Alpha)
• Oracle raises the app server ante for open source solutions — Oracle Acquires BEA for $8.5B (Blogging Stocks)
• Matt Asay thinks Oracle’s BEA bid is a win for JBoss/RedHat (CNet Open Road)
• Drupal offers security fixes — Drupal verion 4.7.x and 5.6 upgrades available (Drupal.org)
• Open source community opens source. Is this recursion? - Ohloh Goes Open Source (PR Newswire)

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Here are the most recent updates and additions to listed projects on the EOS Directory:

• eZ publish — Widely used and functionally rich content, e-commerce and document management system implemented in PHP.
• Amanda network backup and recovery — Amanda is the most popular open source backup and recovery software in the world. Amanda protects more that half a million of servers and desktops running various versions of Linux, UNIX, Mac OS-X and Microsoft Windows operating systems worldwide.
• Drupal Enterprise Content Management — Content Management System ( CMS ) implemented in PHP, with a strong focus on community, social networking, and media features. There’s a large repository of add-ons and extension modules available.

And here are the most recent candidate projects submitted:

• IX Workflow Framework — The Imixs Open Source Project (imixs.org) was created to promote the development of workflow technologies based on open software standards.
• GROUP-E – GROUP-E is collaboration software which integrates groupware, project management, and business server on one platform. The solution is based on a LAMP architecture (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). GROUP-E offers project management, transparent Samba (file server) integration, integration of Cyrus IMAP server with administration and personal SIEVE filters, support for SyncML 1.0, LDAP-based user management with single sign-on authentication, and LDAP contact databases.
• ZRM for MySQL backup — Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL simplifies the life of a Database Administrator who needs an easy-to-use yet flexible and robust backup and recovery solution for MySQL server.

Be sure to go in and offer your ratings and comments on new and existing projects. Plus — keep an eye out for the candidates. They’ll be published after they receive their EOS ratings from Optaros.

Got a project you think is enterprise-ready and not listed in the directory? Submit your project to the EOS Directory.

Got comments about the directory and the project listings? Feel free to add them below.

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We have been busy adding new functionalities to EOS. The latest addition is the “propose a project” feature. This now gives our users the possibility to propose candidates for the directory. Each proposed project will go through our standard process to receive the necessary information and the ratings. Our objective is to include projects that are relevant to enterprises and mature for enterprise usage. We try to keep the directory balanced in terms of granularity of the individual components. Currently we do have 294 projects listed and a significant number on the waiting list.

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Back in February of this year, Nat Torkington asked “Is ‘Open Source’ Now Completely Meaningless?”

Obviously we don’t think so, having just launched this directory, but from the beginning, one of the challenges has been just what definition of Open Source we should use in determining which projects to include.

Dana Blankenhorn posted recently on ZDNet (”Optaros EOS will take the licensing question seriously“) talking about some of the issues and our plans for handling them. (For more on the subject see Michael Tiemann’s “Will the Real Open Source CRM Please Stand Up, ” and Matt Aslett’s “Centric CRM and SocialText respond to open source hard line,” as well as Blankenhorn’s earlier posts on the subject)

The simplest criteria we could use to determine whether to include a certain project is whether the software is available under an OSI Approved License. If the license being used is not currently OSI approved (as is true of, for example, with the Affero GPL), we could try to determine whether the license would be approved if submitted, by testing the license against the open source definition. (This approach would run the risk of marking as “unapprovable” licenses that OSI might approve, or of marking licenses as “approvable” that OSI might reject.)

However, there are projects out there which are widely used in enterprises, and which describe themselves as open source. For example, projects which require the prominent display of a logo in any derived work (often called “badgeware” or “logoware”), or projects which use an Affero GPL like clause to close what they see as an ASP or services “loophole. These licenses have not met with OSI approval, and yet many would consider such projects open source and wonder why they aren’t listed.

Our approach has been, and will continue to be, to provide as much clarity as possible about the licenses under which various projects are available.

As my colleague Dave Gynn put in his discussion with Blankenhorn, our plan is to positively identify projects whose licenses are OSI approved, and provide a basic overview of what that means and why we think it is important.

This way, projects whose licenses are not OSI approved will still be included in the directory with what license they are released under clearly identified.

We’re also trying to find a fair but clear way to identify and present to users what prevents any particular license from being OSI approved. This can be complicated, however, since we do not want to position ourselves as speaking for the OSI (it is not up to Optaros to determine what is or is not OSI approved licensing) or for the project (presenting the projects’ own rationale for its license does not mean endorsing it).

I’m also interested in what the community of users here has to say. What guidelines would you like to see applied to projects being considered for inclusion in the EOS Directory?

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