I previously questioned Red Hat’s apparent lack of love for Hyperic. Today, Stacey Schneider, Senior Director of Marketing at Hyperic, tipped me off to a joint Hyperic & Red Hat announcement.

Stacey writes:

“Finally today we announced that Red Hat and Hyperic will be working together on the development of a common systems management platform.

……
As you know, back in 2005 was originally OEMed to create JON before the Red Hat acquisition. At the time, the software licensed was still closed and the software has not been upgraded since, rather JBoss and now Red Hat has been updating the software privately. The new project will update the software contributions from Hyperic to its latest software, contribute the additional code written by the JON team, and work jointly to create a roadmap of future features. And of course make it all open source! (GPL v2)

…….

This new open source project is meant to create a repository of common services to be used in future versions of Red Hat and Hyperic products. Both companies will work to maintain, govern and extend management capabilities within the new open source systems management platform project.”

Now, this is very cool news, and a great endorsement for Hyperic technology. The deal appears to position Hyperic as the de facto systems management provider for Red Hat customers. Choice is great, but it can sometimes work against OSS in the CIO’s mind.

The deal is also an endorsement of Red Hat’s community. Long-time readers may remember that I questioned the “endorsement of the JBoss community” when Exadel decided to move their development into the JBoss community. I questioned the endorsement because there had been funds exchanged, making this an acquisition rather than an endorsement of community A vs. community B.

This agreement, may lead to an acquisition in the future, but today, it’s about one independent company agreeing to join forces and communities with another independent company.

Kudos to Hyperic & Red Hat for making this happen.