One of the key moments in the history of free software was the rise of companies based around open source. After the first wave of startups based around offering distros and support for them – Red Hat being perhaps the most famous and successful example – there followed a second wave of companies offering open source versions of key enterprise software, many of them described in the early posts of this blog.
But things have moved on. Nowadays, open source is fast becoming the standard for business software, apart from a few old dinosaurs moaning about the meteorites. However, with that maturing of the marketplace, it is inevitable that some early open-source companies have changed. For example, a post from SugarCRM earlier this year entitled “SugarCRM in the Next 10 Years” revealed that the open source version would be available, and supported until 2015, but no longer actively developed:
Fred Blauer and Associates Blog 