So as all of you know, Damien is now an IBM employee, and CouchDB is slated to become an Apache project from now on. Many people have wondered, why? I had opined how excited I am, and Damien has posted a Q&A on his blog. But clearly it was not sufficient, given that I wrote a piece on our acquisitions, at least two people -- Daniel Krook and Steven O'Grady wondered if getting Damien as an employee represents a form of acquisition.
Daniel wrote," Hi Anant,
Would you consider CouchDB an "acquisition," given that Damien Katz was hired into Information Management and the CouchDB project slated to become an Apache project with IBM's help?
Damien's provided his own take on the matter at damienkatz.net, but how do you see it?"
Stephen O'Grady wrote, referencing my acquisition posting, "a good post from Anant on the acquisition strategy from IBM; would also have added the hire of Damien Katz, though obviously he is not a firm."
So here was my answer to Daniel's query (would have been the same to O'Grady if he had posed it in the form of a question :)
Daniel,
No. I hired Damien for the explicit purpose of making sure that the open community can continue this fascinating experiment of CouchDB (and of course, who knows, we might be interested in embedding CouchDB in something we do, but right now it is all about the open experiment). Plus, as you know, we/I believe a lot in the open innovation model, so having some new genes in the form of Damien is always exciting.
In the last sentence, it does have characteristics of one reason why acquire companies, as I stated. But that is where similairities end, in my opinion.