Oops They Did it Again: Sun Bought the VirtualBox Team

Well, Sun bought another Open Source company. This time it is the group responsible for the multi-platform Open Source VirtualBox virtualization product:

Sun Microsystems Announces Agreement to Acquire Innotek, Expanding Sun xVM Reach to the Developer Desktop

I'm not quite as concerned about this purchase as I was and continue to be about their purchase of MySQL. Why? Because I don't use VirtualBox (though it sounds very interesting). This isn't an anti-Sun rant, btw (though I am still annoyed at the way they disappeared Cobalt after purchasing them.

The problem is that Open Source and Web 2.0 acquisitions have not seemed to have gone well in the last couple of years even when the purchasing entity have a good track record. Which ones? How about Red Hat and JBoss? Or, how about Google and any Web 2.0 property they purchased recently? Seen JotSpot anywhere since they were bought back in 2006? How about DodgeBall? Or GrandCentral?

Merging two business entities is a tough task. And, it doesn't look like a high percentage of them work out from my perspective. I'm happy for the hard working folks at MySQL, Innotek, and other acquired tech companies. But, in most cases, it has been a loss for end-users like us.