We have previously voiced concern about the pipeline for VC funding based on the fact that while the first quarter of 2008 was the most successful quarter in history in terms of open source vendors raising venture capital funding, the percentage of disclosed Seed and Series A funding hit an all time low in the quarter.

Embedded virtualization specialist VirtualLogix has announced series B funding of $16 million. New investors included Intel Capital and round leader Esprit Capital Partners, while existing investors Atlas Venture and Index Ventures also contributed.

Zend, one of the lead commercial PHP vendors, today announced that they have received another $9 million in venture capital funding, led by Greylock Partners. So my question is - if Zend is already successful, both in terms of technology and customers why does it still need additional venture funding?

The figures for publicly disclosed venture capital funding in open source vendors during Q4 and FY08 are in and while the numbers themselves provide a mixed picture, the statistics don’t necessarily tell the full story.

The slowdown in venture capital funding for Linux and open source-related vendors continued in the third quarter as disclosed funding deals were down 41.6% to $77.8m*, compared to $133.3m in the same quarter last year.

CMP Channel Test Center conducted its first-ever World Series of Linux, looking at six desktop distributions of the Open Source OS. Over three rounds, they were put through the paces to see if Linux is ready for prime time. In Round 2, it's SLED 10 vs. Fedora 7 vs. PCLinuxOS

When Astaro's founders launched the company in 2000, venture capital funding for open source businesses was hard to find. CEO Jan Hichert says he and his colleagues tried but failed to secure funding and had to bootstrap. After the company was proved successful, VCs proved more willing to contribute to a company built on open source.

After seven years of slowly building its business, Centric CRM is suddenly on a roll. Earlier this month, Centric -- an open source software development company -- announced that it had received an infusion of investment funding from Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of technology titan Intel.

In 2005, Alfresco was the first open source software company in the UK to capture venture funding, for its collection of enterprise document management applications. John Powell, formerly the COO of Business Objects, and John Newton, founder of Documentum, got together to launch Alfresco because they wanted to create a business that would have "global reach," according to Powell.