The original founder of Covalent Technologies, Randy Terbush (pictured), writes in response to last Friday's report that Covalent has been bought by 3-year old SpringSource. "I've bit my tongue on the many inaccuracies reported about "Covalent" over the past 5 years," writes Randy Terbush, "but your article and the quote "Besides commercial Apache support, Covalent, whose founders helped develop the hysterically successful Apache HTTP Web Server..." motivates me to correct the misinformation."

Here we bring his letter in full:

From: Randy Terbush

Subject: Getting the Covalent story right...

Sunday, February 03, 2008

I've bit my tongue on the many inaccuracies reported about "Covalent" over the past 5 years, but your article and the quote "Besides commercial Apache support, Covalent, whose founders helped develop the hysterically successful Apache HTTP Web Server..." motivates me to correct the misinformation.

I am the founder of Covalent. The company was started in 1994, long before it adopted the name of Covalent in 1996. I was forced out of the company by the CEO (who I had hired as my replacement in 2000) in 2003. I was kicked out of the company that I had given 9 years of my life because I was fighting to preserve the business model of support for the Apache HTTP server and other Apache Open Source products. It cost me a month's salary in attorney fees to get 6 months severance from a company that I had given easily 3 times the amount of time as the next nearest employee's tenure.

In 2005, the CEO John Jack (now CEO of Fortify) ran the Covalent that I had founded into bankruptcy. The ensuing fire sale enabled the VP of Sales to purchase the Covalent name and customer list, while the offtrack technology was purchased by the founders of Hyperic.

The stock held by myself and the many other people that gave me their commitment in the years following our first venture funding in 2000 was flushed. The New Covalent then went back to the business of supporting the Apache Open Source components. The same business model I had lost my dream fighting for.

There are no Apache group "founders" left in Covalent. Certainly some of the developers that came to a successful Apache Software Foundation after it had found success, but the claims of "the founders of Covalent being founders of Apache" are completely false.

Perhaps there are a few sour grapes in my position regarding this company calling themselves "Covalent". But from the perspective of myself and the many other people that made many sacrifices to help build a company that provided Apache Open Source support, the success of the "New Covalent" is on the backs or our sacrifice.

Thanks for reading -Randy