From: announce-admin@opennms.org
To: <announce@opennms.org>
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 06:35:21 -0400
Subject: [opennms-announce] OpenNMS Funding Search Completed

To:  Contributors, Partners, and Members of the OpenNMS Community
From:  The Members of the OpenNMS Core Team
Re:  Project Funding

While we have been busy building an open source alternative to proprietary
enterprise management platforms, we've also been looking for a funding
source.  We are excited to announce that we've received the necessary
funding to not only bring the Bluebird software to market, but to augment
the core team with additional developers and continue toward our goal of
building a world-class support organization to support Bluebird deployments.
The funding comes by way of an acquisition of the corporate entity that the
founders of the OpenNMS movement established as funding mechanism, by
the Atipa Corporation, a leading supplier of Linux workstations, servers,
and clusters, as well as open source services and solutions.

The details of the funding are pretty straightforward, but as with anything
that involves lawyers, they become murky if you get lost in the details.
The key points of the funding process are as follows:

 - Early on, in building the Bluebird design and architecture, it became
apparent that we needed some legal entity through which to track expenses
and treat as our "employer".  This entity was legally known as
"PlatformWorks".
 - The funding comes as an acquisition of PlatformWorks by the Atipa
Corporation.
 - When we made the decision to allow the acquisition to move forward, we
had several funding options on the table.  The Atipa Corporation proposal
tracked most closely with our original goals, allowing us to focus on
building the software without the burden of seeking venture capital and
adding investors that may attempt to influence the development process and
cloud our dedication to open source.
 - Atipa's goals are quite clear and have been proven out in our involvement
to date:  Provide funding to build the Bluebird software and a corresponding
support organization, allowing the core team to operate autonomously
throughout the process.
 - Atipa has a proven track record of supporting open source efforts, and
doing so very successfully.

We've had several opportunities to meet with management and staff from Atipa
and we are very excited about the possibilities moving forward.  One of our
biggest hurdles for OpenNMS has been the prospect of competing against "the
big boys".  It becomes a far less daunting proposition when we have a
well-funded, well-managed corporation backing us in the process.

We thank Atipa for their support and belief in our vision and look forward
to
a long, profitable relationship.

Shane O.
========
Shane O'Donnell
Open Source Coordinator
OpenNMS
======================
It's Revolution, not Evolution
at http://www.opennms.org !
======================

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