[And by some accounts, integrating JBoss into the more buttoned-down Red Hat culture was not always easy. But that's exactly the right thing to do if Red Hat is serious about becoming a billion dollar company.]

The numbers (and I) disagree. You get to be a billion-dollar company by nurturing your acquisitions and treating them as investments, not by cramming the square peg in the round hole.

That's not really fair, Roy. You and I both know about some of the "behind-the-scenes" stuff with the JBoss acquisition, but the reality is that Red Hat is now recognizing that the middleware world is different and it is treating JBoss differently as a consequence. You can't really fault Red Hat for believing it had figured out open source once and for all because of its success in Linux and to therefore resist seeing JBoss as anything different until, well, it saw that it truly was different.

This doesn't mean that Red Hat needs to throw out its old game plan. It's just updating it. I've talked a lot with the executive and middle management there and I think they're taking a constructive approach to JBoss now, one that should pay off.

[I've talked a lot with the executive and middle management there and I think they're taking a constructive approach to JBoss now, one that should pay off.]

Agreed. I think the lesson is learned and they're trying to rectify the situation.

My point was to Zack's - that somehow cramming the wild JBoss in to the straight-laced RHT is how you become a $1b+ company. *That* is a doomed strategy in any acquisition.

Acquire a company like a Roman army does, not like the invasion of Iraq (although it seems that recently, the US has learned the strategy as well).

I'm not sure how this is that difficult to understand and why VPs of Transformers need to be hired. But hey... what the hell do I know? ;-)

I said integrating, I didn't say "cramming." And I think there's a big distinction.

The JBoss culture was a good one for a startup company. But I don't think it was a culture that could scale to be a billion dollar company. Hopefully Red Hat blends the organization to keep what made it strong, but make sure it also meets the needs of corporate customers.

--Zack

[The JBoss culture was a good one for a startup company. But I don't think it was a culture that could scale to be a billion dollar company.]

Interesting point as MySQL may soon face the same situation. ;-)

Theres no reason the JBoss executive and worker ranks could not have been a $1b+ public company. If you think a group of disruptive mavericks cannot turn in to a successful public company, you only need to look to Google, where even today, they continue to nurture the original culture of the company to their advantage. I'd cite SalesForce.com and Oracle as other examples.

Company cultures will mutate under WallStreet, but a wise executive understands that the original company culture trait is often a competitive advantage. Trying to stomp it out, leads to brain-drain and decay.