Buying Out The Boss

Open-source application server and middleware maker JBoss attracted huge attention last month when it announced it was moving up the stack by building the first commercial-use product based on Enterprise Java Beans 3 (EJB3). Now JBoss is back in the news -- as a potential buyout target.JBoss has been shopping itself around for more than six months, and now there's a report that Oracle might be interested in inking a deal for the firm. And why not? The super-acquisitive software titan already said this week that it snapped up Sleepycat, a maker of open-source databases. When it comes to databases and business intelligence, open source is a hot place to be.