Several key Drupal community members have gathered together with some others to form Acquia, a new commercial firm that hopes to sell subscriptions to Drupal a la RedHat’s linux distros. Acquia has already generated $7 million in funding.
I notice the similarities between Acquia and rSmart, where I now work. Both are focused on the open source web application layer, both think of RedHat as a model, both are working within large, already established open source communities. There are other examples…but apparently the idea of commercial subscriptions for open source web applications is catching on…