[Zope] FYI: Digital Creations secures $12M round of investment

[Paul Everitt]

Hello Zope friends.  At long last we at Digital Creations are able to
publicly say it: we've closed a $12M round of investment:

  http://www.digicool.com/News/CRound.html

It's out on the newswire now.  We'll start pushing it out more over the next
24 hours.

This, needless to say, is a big deal, one that we've worked on really,
really hard this year.  With the tech market downturn since March, and with
Open Source particularly getting a beating, it's vindicating to get good
funding from strong partners.  When everyone else was getting wads of cash
during the go-go times, we were quietly at work, being frugal, making money,
making a business case, and being profitable. We're proud to say that we got
our money when money was hard to find.

Let's put it this way: Open Source business is hardly dead.  It's just
different, and better.

What will this mean?  First and foremost, Zope and Digital Creations will
become very competitive, very quickly, along a number of axes. As the
PythonLabs move indicated, we are taking aggressive steps to become a
dramatic force in the worlds of content management, web application
services, and Open Source leadership.  With this round, our business model
has been validated.

As a member of the Zope community, I view this as "the dream delivered".
Many of us care deeply about this thing we're involved in, and sometimes it
feels like a longshot.  Though this is still a David vs. Goliath, David now
has a slingshot, and a bit of steel in his eye.  Thanks go to the folks here
at DC, to the Zope and Python communities, and to the companies around the
world that are basing their business on Zope.

Onward!

--Paul