In his annual post (sorry, Larry - couldn't help myself :-), Larry has tracked open source venture investments and posted the results: over $1B in open source investments in the last three years alone. If we add in investments prior to 2004 (which Larry doesn't do), we scrape $2B. Given how frugal open source companies tend to operate, there's an implicit multiplier on those dollars, making a $2B investment very In his annual post (sorry, Larry – couldn’t help myself :-), Larry has tracked open source venture investments and posted the results: over $1B in open source investments in the last three years alone. If we add in investments prior to 2004 (which Larry doesn’t do), we scrape $2B.Given how frugal open source companies tend to operate, there’s an implicit multiplier on those dollars, making a $2B investment very, very big indeed.But Larry doesn’t think we’re going to see significant upticks in open source investment over the next year or so, and I think his reasons are sound, with the second contributing back to his first (i.e., VCs want to spread risk and so won’t overload themselves with open source investments): …[T]he ability to make a large return on an investment in an open source company is still largely unproven and investors are going to hesitate to plow more money into Open Source until they have more evidence of success. Yes, we have a few success stories: Red Hat, JBoss, TrollTech, and SourceFire. But that’s a pretty thin list….Based on the maturity of the existing private Open Source companies, I don’t think we’re likely to see another large proof point until 2008, and multiple proof points until 2009. I think MySQL is a first quarter 2008 IPO if they can successfully transition to US GAAP accounting and demonstrate predictable growth in 2007. After MySQL there are several private Open Source companies that will do more than $20MM in bookings or revenue in 2007, positioning themselves for $40MM+ in 2008 and an early 2009 IPO. That means we’re at least a year, and maybe 2, from the more significant proof points needed to encourage more investment.Larry is right. It’s not that open source isn’t being adopted en masse (it is), but rather that it takes time for this to show up in the balance sheets of open source vendors. In the meantime, it’s enough that virtually every software and services vendor is now incorporating open source software and strategies. The assimilation is nearly complete. 🙂 Open Source