January 3rd, 2009
EMC gets open source mojo cheap
Matt Asay is not alone in wondering why EMC bought Sourcelabs.
Sourcelabs will now be part of a new personal storage unit of EMC called Decho, under former Microsoft executive Harel Kodesh, who has done a blog post heralding his own appointment.
What’s the strategy?
Will the SASH stack now become the management center of Decho’s online backup service?
Will Sourcelabs survive?
Does Kodesh have a special task in mind for Sourcelabs CEO Byron Sebastian and his team?
Or is it just possible EMC was looking for some open source mojo?
My guess is this was a rescue mission. The economic collapse was hitting Sourcelabs hard, the company was spinning in, and EMC saw a chance to get a good engineering team at a reasonable price. Sourcelabs and Decho are both in Seattle.
These are “Mr. Potter” days in the tech business. He who has the gold makes the rules. We dance to the tune of cash. While open source is based on principle, the principals can’t live on that alone.
EMC is shelter from the storm. We should all be so lucky in 2009.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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