Red Hat acquires FuseSource

Red Hat have announced their acquisition of FuseSource. You may have not heard of FuseSource but you have probably heard of Active MQ, Camel, ServiceMix and Apache CXF. Well FuseSource provided paid support services for these projects and also employs a number of key commiters as well. Originally created out of IONA then acquired by Progress FuseSource have been around for quite a while. The business models and open source cultures of FuseSource and Red Hat match well, probably much better than the business models of FuseSource and Progress. From a business perspective the merger makes sense. Acquiring Fusesource gives Red Hat an opportunity to use their marketing clout and Linux penetration to try and convert many of the large customers that use the Apache variants into paying Red Hat support customers. Something that Fusesource without the Linux installed base has struggled to do. Red Hat already do this with their Tomcat support packages (who knows how successfully). If you are using ActiveMQ, Tomcat, Camel or ServiceMix on top of RHEL expect a call from your friendly Red Hat sales rep ;-)
However what about the technologies? Well there is a lot of overlap;

ActiveMQ <-> HornetQ
Camel <-> SwitchYard/JBoss ESB
Apache CXF <-> JBoss Web Services
FuseHQ <-> RHQ (JBoss Operations Network)
Apache Service Mix <-> SwitchYard/JBoss ESB

In our experience the Apache (FuseSource) technologies are much more widely deployed than the equivalent Red Hat technologies however usually in the Apache variant rather than the FuseSource variant. My technical prediction for a year or so from now (I have no inside knowledge) on the winners and losers in that list are;
ActiveMQ (much more widely deployed than HornetQ and has a good reputation)
SwitchYard (merging in Camel and ServiceMix, SwitchYard already supports Camel)
Apache CXF (already an option in JBoss)
RHQ (FuseHQ is a licensed version of Hyperic which is a VMWare product)

More interesting is what will Red Hat do with development as these are all currently Apache projects will they transition future development onto JBoss.org or leave them in Apache?
From a C2B2 perspective we already provided consultancy services on ActiveMQ, Camel, CXF and ServiceMix so no change for us. In fact we have had discussions with FuseSource in the past about becoming partners so one less partner fee to pay.

On Balance, good synergy, good news.

Steve Millidge