The Raleigh, N.C. commercial Linux vendor bought Atlanta-based JBoss this week for at least US$350 million, a price tag that could rise to $420 million if the open-source application server vendor meets certain financial targets.

Users and analysts applauded the marriage of two of the biggest stars in the commercial open-source arena.

"Of all the potential firms who could have acquired JBoss, we feel that Red Hat - being an open source proponent - is a good match for us," said Barry Strasnick, CIO of CitiStreet LLC, a Quincy, Mass.-based benefits provider. Formerly a big user of the WebLogic application server from BEA Systems Inc., CitiStreet started moving to JBoss in 2004. It now runs all of its mission-critical applications using JBoss on top of Red Hat Linux.

Badri Nittoor, CEO of JBoss systems integrator Tripod Technologies LLC in Cherry Hill, N.J., said users now have an open-source alternative to get J2EE support for enterprise class applications -- as well as a way to move toward a service-oriented architecture (SOA).

Red Hat, which leads the Linux server market over Novell Inc.'s SUSE Linux, has tried to build its own open-source application stack -- which Novell already boasts. But Red Hat has had limited success so far.