The proposed $350 million buyout announced in the first half April,2006 by Linux distributor Red Hat, Inc., of Java middleware maker JBoss, Inc. is seen by analysts as the first major consolidation initiative in the open source software realm that has potential to challenge the might of software giants like Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.
They admit the cash and stock deal has fallacies — The $350 million Red Hat is paying for JBoss ($420 million if JBoss hits all revenue targets) is higher than Red Hat’s $278 million in revenue for the fiscal ended 28 February. And JBoss is said to have had around $80 million in revenue during the fiscal. But, they say the scope the merged entity holds out — middleware has huge prospects — is the key element of Red Hat’s offer and it is the future that is looked at.
Read the news which discuss financial aspects of deal between Redhat and JBOSS