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CyberNet Plans an IPO & Motley Fool on LinuxOne
The continued reign of Linux on Wall Street has found another sequel with CyberNet planning an IPO. CyberNet is, according to the press release, "a developer of Linux server software". And in an aside, The Motley Fool has an article on the LinuxOne IPO entitled LinuxOne: The Beauty of a Bad Example - Lesson: Caveat Emptor. Very amusing.
Thanks,
Ken
kmunie@cybernet.com
www.cybernet.com
-f
http://www.peruano.org
-f
www.blackant.net
The Fool mentions this as being the best April Fools joke of the year but if LinuxOne can actually pull of a cashing-in of the hype and hold their value for 6 months (unlikely but possible) and then cash out, we all become the April Fool. Its sad and disgusting and I only hope they dont damage the credibility of honest companies trying to help the community when their fit hits the shan.
God Fucking Damnit
I'm just a stone's throw from Cybernet in Ann Arbor. I will say that from what I know of them, they are pretty cool regarding the Linux community. They were at a local Linux install fest at a local systems integrator a couple of months ago, and showed off their NetMax stuff to a bumper-crop crowd, and raffled off boxed sets of their File Server, Web Server, and Firewall software. I've considered picking up their Firewall set, because I just can't seem to find the time to figure out how to configure one of my SuSE installs for a firewall for cable modem use for my home office situation. The Netmax stuff promises to make that situation much easier, by letting me take an old 486 I have sitting around, and loading their distribution on to it, and then being able to administrate through a web interface. Sounds kind of nice. Check them out at a CompUSA near you (they are probably on the shelves in other stores by now, as well).
I've been waiting for weeks now for a critical article on the LinuxOne IPO from a mainstream non-Linux friendly source and this is it.
:)
After reading articles like this one which actually may convince some silly investors that LinuxOne is a Linux underdog that may take off. Or even worse articles from other mainstream press that merely state that Open Source "enthusiasts" dislike LinuxOne for not being true to Open Source (they usually link to this), it is good to see a reputable mainstream site do a quality job of describing LinuxOne to the average clueless investor (when I say clueless i mean with regards to Linux).
In a climate where Salon's stock rises 90% simply because they are going to provide content on RedHat's website, LinuxOne has potential to rise above and beyond their IPO price , fleecing unknowledgeable investors along the way. What's extremely interesting is that the CEO of LinuxOne hold shares of LinuxOne through a charity and thus may be able to cash out if given prior written consent by their underwriter(From ZDNet).
All in all kudos to Motley Fool for showing the average investor exactly what kind of company LinuxOne is. I especially like the blurb at the end...
I can't repeat this enough: DO YOUR OWN HOMEWORK. It's a vicious market out there, buyer beware. Don't blindly trust a company's press releases, they're advertising. Don't trust what analysts say about it. Even the Fool has been small-f fooled before, right here in this portfolio. Our original paper money "Simpleton" portfolio included Oxford Health Plans (Nasdaq: OXHP), which one day lost 75% of its value due to "accounting irregularities." I know the stock market's booming like mad but DON'T go on margin, DON'T gamble away money you can't afford to lose, and DON'T put all your eggs in one basket. We don't always repeat that often enough here, so you'd better get in the habit of repeating it to yourself.
If only all individual investors followed this advice maybe the stock market wouldn't be the crazy place it is today.
Linux One's web site is at LinuxOne
Check out AbiWord.
Linuxone.com doesn't have a web page on it, but linuxone.net does. So the statement, "at the time of this writing it only has a logo that sends email to the company if you click on it" is pretty much completely wrong.
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Xenu loves you!
I checked the meta tags on the real LinuxOne web page and noticed they have the more popular distributions listed in there (Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, etc.) I checked RedHat and Caldera's web pages and they don't seem to have meta tags naming other distributions on their web pages. Just kinda interesting to me.
Mr. McGuire : I just want to say one word to you...just one word. ...Linux.
Benjamin Braddock : Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire : Are you listening?
Benjamin Braddock : Yes, sir I am.
Mr. McGuire :
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Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
Although I sent the Fool an e-mail informing them that they visited the wrong LinuxOne web site, I'm glad to see that the financial press is giving fair and insightful coverage into Linux. Apparently they also read Slashdot, as some of the details of the Power Source scam (i.e. waking the guy up if you call early) were very close to the Slashdot comments about that subject.
Sigh. Stupid LinuxOne, don't ruin it for the rest of us.
For more information, click here.
It's not entirely true that PERL has nothing to do with Linux. See this article for a recent example of how they're integrating their systems with Linux. However, they're not putting all their eggs in one basket; according to some of the other news they've generated in the past few months, they also appear to be actively supporting Windows 2000.
Besides, Perl isn't a common buzzword like Linux is. I'm just as cynical of modern-day "investors" as the next guy, but I don't think too many would see it as closely tied to Linux.
For more information, click here.
I sent a friendly note to abuse@hotmail.com mentioning that ps84@hotmail.com was using his email address for business, and pointed them at the Power Source web page where it's listed.
For those that don't know, using a Hotmail address for business is a violation of the Hotmail Terms of Service.
I got a note back from abuse@hotmail.com yesterday. They've cancelled the account. So, at this point, Power Source doesn't even have an email address.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
LinuxOne appears to fall into the same category as the side-show both operators at the local fair, selling tickets to let you see the two-headed horse and the lizard man. P.T. Barnum had it right when he said, "There's a sucker born every minute."
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
LinuxOne is obviously bullshit but your remarks might some day apply to RedHat as well. They do not believe in their core business generating enough revenue to support this outrageous stock value and , recently, started buying out profitable companies to fix that rather serious problem.
Yes, but Red Hat didn't cause the stock to skyrocket through deceptive techniques. It skyrocketed based on hype, and there's not much they can do about that. What do you do, issue press releases saying "Look guys, when we predicted maybe 30% growth [or whatever they said] a year and limited profits, we actually meant it?" Best you can do is buy other money-making companies and then perhaps the bubble won't burst, or if it does, people won't lose their shirts, just a few buttons.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Well, the link above isn't an http_referrer, technically... I'd be surprised if AtGuard or whatever would strip something out of a URL.
:)
In any case, Junkbuster works just fine for me - in Windows *and* Linux.
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So, RedHat is using its stock valuation to increase future profitibility by merging with compatible companies with good earnings potential? Sounds like they're doing the right thing, then. Think of it as a positive feedback loop--a higher valuation enables a company to increase its earnings via appropriate mergers, which of course helps justify the high valuation.
In other words, RedHat's investors are in effect giving RedHat money to invest and manage for them. If all RedHat did with the money was make lots of expensive CDROMs with a middling-quality Linux distro on them, I doubt if investors would stay with them very long.
You seem to have missed the fact that RedHat has never claimed that those distro CDROMs would be their major revenue source in the future--rather that services and other products would be the growth areas. Their stock valuation makes them even less reliant on income from their distribution, since they now can pursue partnerships and products that they could hardly have dreamed of pre-IPO.