Venture capitalists have showered open source companies with cash so far this year, marking a record high of $203.75 million in funding for vendors developing flexible, low-cost wares.

The 451 Group reported this week that 20 open source funding deals inked this quarter surpassed the $100.4 million raised in the same quarter last year. And this year's take so far also exceeded the all-time high of $193.7 million raised in the fourth quarter of 2006. According to The 451 Group, total funding for open source companies stands at $2.64 billion.

The good news, according to The 451 Group enterprise software analyst Matthew Aslett's blog post, is that the first quarter's funding immediately followed a plunge in open source investment in late 2007.

"Yes, it is April 1, and no I'm not joking. Following the plunge in the fourth quarter of 2007, [venture capital] funding started 2008 on a high," Aslett wrote.

The drop-off in funding last year had many speculating that open source investment peaked in 2006, with a total of $546.3 million reported then. Last year, The 451 Group saw a more than 40% drop down to $323.87 million for the full year. The research firm bases its statistics on disclosed numbers, and Aslett reports that of the 20 total funding deals, 17 disclosed value, putting the size of the average deal close to $12 million.

"That is the second highest average deal size ever, behind the $13.84 million recorded in [fourth quarter of 2006], when there were 14 deals with a disclosed deal value," Aslett reported.

Even the sheer number of open source funding deals also sets records. There were 20 such transactions in the first quarter, beating the previous record of 17 total deals set in both the first quarter of 2005 and that last quarter of 2006. When compared with the same quarter last year -- 11 deals with a disclosed value that averaged little more than $9 million -- Aslett expects 2008 is shaping up to exceed last year's total, but most likely not to top 2006's numbers.

"Despite the incredible growth in the first quarter in total, it is based on that statistic that I'm predicting that that total funding in 2008 will be higher that the $323.87 million raised in full year 2007 but still well below the $546.3 million raised in 2006," he wrote.