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Could Mandrake Sell Stock To Users Who Love It?
An anonymous reader writes: "Tech stocks are in the toilet and the word Linux makes investors curse right now, but Mandrake is talking about an IPO. Business writer Jack Bryar suggests a way Mandrake could go public in spite of Linux's bad rep on Wall Street: by selling shares to loyal users the same way the Green Bay Packers sold shares to local football fans who wanted to 'be part of the team' but didn't necessarily expect to make a profit. Do you think enough people love Manrake enough to make this work? I might buy $1000 worth myself if they did this, just for the hell of it. Would you?" It's an interesting idea, not necessarily limited to Mandrake either, though that does sound like a good first candidate.
I have an idea. Why don't we actually just *buy* the companies product first, instead of paying chunks of money for the stock?
My reason would be that I like Mandrake for the direction it's going: Making a user-friendly distro that can be used by novices on up. If any distro will compete with windows it's Mandrake. (or maybe OS X) I think Linux is a good OS that could compete if it had more apps and was tightened up on the UI side. In other words it's a good cause and I'd like to be able to help it happen any way I can.
First: any company -- public or private -- can issue shares to anyone they want. I can be a private company and offer shares to whomever I want. Anyone who has ever launched an S Corporation -- which, apparently, includes none of the wankers involved in this discussion -- knows that at the time of incorporation you determine how many shares compises the company and who should own them. If Mandrakesoft wanted to, they could offer shares privately. Going public means that shares are traded on an exchange.
Secondly, Mandrakesoft already accepts contributions via PayPal. Betcha $1000 not a single slashdotter in this discussion who says that they'd invest in Mandrakesoft has actually contributed in this manner. You CAN put your money where your mouth is. Mandrakesoft reports that there have been fewer than 40 contributions via PayPal. Fewer than 40! Lotsa big talk around here, but there's little followthrough.
Thirdly: Green Bay Packers shares are sold as limited shares. If the team moves or is sold, all the proceeds go to the local VFW and the shareholders are screwed. (Really.) Personally, the thought of dismantling Mandrakesoft and distributing the remains to a local VFW does have a certain appeal....
Fourth: RED HAT ALREADY DID THIS. How quickly we forget. When Red Hat went public, a certain percentage of shares were set aside for the community. For this, Red Hat ended up in court. I am sure Mandrakesoft would really love to end up in an American court as well. Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
Slashdot should quit linking to dumb things on their sister sites, and they also should disclose when a link exists just to drive traffic to a really lame OSDN site.
The industry insider knowledge that you have can come back and bite you in the ass, though. Take Rambus, for example. They have the patent on arguably the best memory chip design on the market. Intel has declared that the P4's roadmap will only run with DDR for a short time, but RDRAM and the P4 are joined at the hip. Then you look and see that Rambus not only has patents on RDRAM, but also on SDRAM and DDR-RAM! Sure, they came about them in a little underhanded way, but when has underhandedness ever been looked down upon in the software world (*cough*Microsoft*cough*)?
Now you've got a company that holds patents on every viable memory type for personal computers. You know that PC's are selling like hotcakes and that means memory is too, which all boils down to huge royalties for Rambus.
But that isn't what happened. Rambus decided that they wanted to play the heavy and tried to roll every memory maker on the market. A little business sense would have told you to get the hell out when they served papers to the likes of Siemens and Hyundai. Business is about more than just technical superiority, it's also about getting along with those you exploit.
RDRAM may be the superior memory architecture, but if you invested for that reason, you may be getting your lunch handed to you.
This is just one example of falling for a company's product and stock, but there are countless others.
It makes sense to limit your individual stock purchases to those areas you have some special knowledge about, but if you fall in love with a stock like PALM or RHAT or LNUX because they mirror what you think, you may be screwing yourself.
Remember, there are a lot of people making money on MSFT stock.
I'd consider buying 500$ worth @ .15cents per share, then sell at .60cents, there best bet is the otcbb, after all, thats where msft started.
The desktop is dying and the future is embedded devices for your clients and 64-bit servers. Why would one dump alot of money in a company that current plans are dominate a market which is dead as a doorknob, ie.. x586
But the "peoples os" may find a bright future into embedded devices, seeing that linux is gplfree!
I'd feel dirty donating money to a for-profit company...
One thing I've wondered about is whether it would ever work to buy "stock" in a person. I program professionally, but if 10,000 people contributed $100 (or some similar number), I'd quit my job and work on open source for the rest of my life, living on the investment proceeds. And the payoff for the investors would be the code I produce. Now, you don't know me from Adam, but perhaps if it was a "name" person (say Alan Cox), where previous rep was sufficient to spur investors, this might work. And perhaps if a few people were established this way, it would provide enough of a boost to add less well-known but competent and hard-working folks (like me) with recommendations, possibly with referenda on each person so hired each year where the investors judge whether the person has done enough in that year.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
There's a big difference between investing in open source and investing in a company. If you want to invest in open source or free software, send your money to a project (FSF, KDE, GNOME, whatever). That will put your money where your mouth is. Purchasing shares of a company isn't the same as supporting open source. Mandrake may produce open sourced software, but if you look at the facts of the situation you'll see that Mandrake is the ONLY company that uses its open source software. So, by supporting Mandrake's open source software, you aren't supporting open source in general. You're just allowing them to produce open source software and sell it (and make money from it) without having to dip into their own pockets.
Believe me, this is one snowball that you DON'T want to start rolling downhill. If every company that produces open source software holds it hostage until you all fork out $$ for it, you'll be in a world of hurt. Consider all the apps that are on Mandrake (or any other distro for that matter) that are produced with corporate backing of some sort, and you'll see how quickly your wallet may be depleted. When it's one company doing this it seems manageable; when it's hundreds, look out.
Make your money go further and invest in projects and "non-denominational" causes if you just want to support the production of open source software.
If you want to play with stocks, play with stocks. Gamble on the success of the business you're investing in, but don't invest as if this one company is going to be the savior of open source software (or as if NOT investing will cause the company to stop producing open source software. If that's the case, they must not be taking their open source stance as seriously as they should).
$200 for a nice looking certificate to hang on your wall proclaiming you as a Packer shareholder and lifetime admittance to the annual shareholders' meeting at Lambeau Field during the summer. If you are a true Packer fan, it isn't a bad deal, even if it will never make you rich.
I don't know if Mandrake's following is quite so loyal though.
That would be the point, to support the company. That's where your money would go.
Engineering and the Ultimate
This is _not_ donations. How on Earth could buying ownership of a company be considered donations?
Investment that is entirely profit-motivated is unethical (i.e. - you shouldn't invest in a company which does things you believe are immoral, and you should always check to find out. This pretty well rules out mutual funds).
Anyway, this is a great idea. Why? If you were a big company, wouldn't it be nice to own a piece of Microsoft? Owning the companies that supply your daily needs can be very beneficial.
Anyway, just my 2 cents
Engineering and the Ultimate
Actually, they might not have to follow those restrictions. They might be able to do this and be privately traded. Also, since their French, I don't know how that affects the rules.
Engineering and the Ultimate
.. or something like that, like a business reply card that gets you a share when you return it.
Make it part of the product reg.
Or not.
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
"I'll buy 100 shares if you put wxWindows and wxPython in your distribution."
Hm.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
It's been said that the lottery is a tax on those that don't understand math. I'd say that casinos are a tax on those who don't understand probability and statistics.
I should 'donate' $1000 to this company to support 'free' software and the good work they do? Sounds good.. While I'm at it, anyone know where I can buy some 1 dollar bills for about $20 each? I want to show my support for the good work the US mint does.
Go ahead, say that I 'dont get it'.. I think I do get it, and I think the recent plummeting of all these dot-com and linux stocks shows that the rest of the world is 'getting it' now too.
Here is an idea for Mandrake, market a product or service that is better than the free one, and charge people for it. Wasnt that supposed to be the way for OSS companies to make money?
I am not a financial/banking person. I was wondering
for a while what an underwriter does. Why can't
you go public by selling your shares e.g. at a kiosk
at an airport? You sound like you could answer
that question.
Depends how much the shares go for at IPO. It's worth a shot...
Blar.
This is rediculous. Who is going to throw away money to a company for no reason? This is totally different than the Green Bay Packers stock offering. Green Bay Packers are publicly held by the city of Green Bay. They wanted a new stadium to keep up the revenue, they offered stock to pay for it. They did not make enough in stock, they then set a sales tax increase, now the fans got their new stadium, what do we get out of Mandrake? Just another release...give me a break..
What if I can't code my way out of a paper bag (and yes I work with people that dream in code)...
Or say, for example, that in the course of being a busy sysadmin and father I dont have the time to contribute documentation. Wouldn't it be cool if by sending them a benjamin I could be contributing enough that I'd get stock in my fave distro?
After all isn't that why we have money: to exchange for goods and services.
If enough people contribute a hundred bucks, there will be money to pay for someone to code. The real question is not HOW you contribute. It's whether actually DO contribute. Do you??
use Signature::Witty;
Every six months, the software could shift into fund-drive mode, and urge uses to donate. "Volunteers are standing by!"
People like you suck. I'm sorry, I don't mean to troll here, but really, did we catch you in a bad mood? Do you really mean to tell me you've never pulled over on a road trip to see that 3000 lb ball of yarn, or pay 15 smacks to get into "Bedrock" Arizona? [It was a riot, and 15 bucks well spent.] ;)
Life is not about business, and no one in the world will have his epitaph say "I should have spent more time at work". Personally, I'd buy it just to show off how much of a geek I was to my fellow Marines. Because I'm bigger.
Sgt_Jake
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
You're logic implies that mandrake is worth $600,000, and you base it on the fact that other linux stocks (RHAT) are around $6. But market cap determines how much a company is worth, and using the following metrics here's how much each share of mandrake would be worth:
If Mandrake is worth 1/10 of RedHat, and offered 100,000 shares, each share would cost about $918! That would net them $90 million dollars!
This was suggested when Commodore first hit the ropes. Fans buy shares because they like the company/product, not because the management have sane or sustainable business model. Commodore went down the toilet anyway, though I don't think many people bought shares.
The problem? The management continues the do stupid things because they know the shareholders are not expecting to make a profit anyway. OK, maybe they won't, but I'd not be expecting any kind of returns if I bought shares.
One company here is having all sorts of problems because its shareholder base is too fragmented to shove the current board.
I'd much rather put my money into things like Debian donations than propping up someone's profit making concern.
How about setting up a mutual society? A publically listed corporation is not the only company model out there and I think some of the other ones might be better for Linux development.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
I second that emotion. /. I use, love, and will buy stock (1 share). All this BS about not making money, charity, illogical investing, ... I see in the threads here, Rave on! my fellow /.ers; you just don't get it.
Nice to see all this on
sig hasn't been updated. I run M/LGX 8.0.
Mandrake 7.2 and KDE 2 for me? for free?
1000 SlashDot sigs
What's with all these articles with the "Hey, wouldn't be cool if we all gave Mandrake some money?" Could there possibly be some shared interest with the Slashdot crew?
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
We (I grew up and still live here in Wisconsin and consider the Packers to be God's own team) might have the smallest stadium, and middlin' revenue, but the Pack is still one of the most successful teams ever. You certainly can't say that about a team located just a little bit west of us... As for the Mandrake stock thing, hell yes! I _really_ like the distro and want to see them continue. I believe that Mandrake will be the distro to conquer the desktop. I'm running 8.0 on one of my workstations and my laptop right now. Gotta love it!
Dive Gear
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
Mandrake is a friendly end-user oriented distribution. It makes sense that they would look to their pleased customers for support. I'll invest-- I've installed 8.0 on both home and work computers and am very happy. Good for novices like myself. Of course, the v.0.02 software without the configure files are tricky to install, but I'll figure out how to get the lib and include paths right one of these days.
I've thought of this, with an application to individuals. I call it True Human Capital, where you invest directly in people with hope of a future return. In theory you could create a "mutual fund" for an open source project and contribute to the people involved that way. Would it work? I'm not sure.
--
OliverWillis.Com
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
While I don't doubt Packer loyalty, they have one of the smallest stadiums in the league and rank at best in the middle of the league in revenue.
--
OliverWillis.Com
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
Mandrake 8.0 is a fantastic product and is IMHO almost there when it comes to competing with Windows for the desktops of the world.
I've been using Linux since '94 and am very impressed by how far it has come. Back then it was Slackware or roll your own, not that there was much difference ;-), and today you can mass deploy Linux on a LAN using a GUI tool that is easier to use than the corresponding tool for Win2K.
Oh, and please don't tell me Mandrake is for newbies only, like that review on Attrition.org. That is just posing and self-important BS.
Go Mandrake!
Gunnar
--
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
Just for clarification.
The Green Bay Packer stock was a complete scam. To say people bought it not expecting to make a profit is not correct. There was NO way to make money on that stock as it was a novelty. On the piece of paper the stock is on the fine print indicated that the stock gets you zero stake in the company and does not entitle you to dividends.
As it stands if the Packers became some multi national hellacious megaplex of a inter plantary conglomerate, the people with that stock would not see one red cent from that stock.
ft
I'm sure I'm merely echoing what a lot of Slashdotters feel, but I know that I would buy stock in Mandrake like this. Like Timothy, I could probably afford a grand.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
why did this get modded down? isn't this a valid question? maybe mandrake should be pursuing donations for continued support, rather than worry about being publicly owned. seems to work ok for the *BSDs (i know i'm not the only one donating to OpenBSD and FreeBSD).
Always assuming the company hasn't gone under, of course....
I like Mandrake, and even though I don't own ANY stock at the moment, if this actually happened I think I'd make an exception for them.
--
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
Cowboy Neal must keep him coming back B-)
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
As I recall, the idea didn't work so well for the Packers. They had to extend the purchasing deadline at least once because the stocks weren't moving.
Like every other for-profit company, they need to compete in the open market. They will win or lose based on the merits of their product, their marketing, economic factors, etc. Saying that the need charity to survive is sort of insulting to Linux.
Like many other Internet related sectors, Linux companies were started and grew with irrational exuberance in the last few years. Like all those Internet companies, the ones with no chance of competing in the open market will fail. This had to be expected. This does not mean Linux will somehow die. It means that Linux will evolve. Some projects will die, some will return to their roots as community projects, some will get swallowed up by larger corporations, and others will flourish on their own.
If a Linux company wants community financial support, it should be set up as a non-profit company, and donations should be tax deductable.
--A big heavy metal band of the 80s was Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden would release an album and it would shoot up the charts and go platinum in a week and then the album would plummet off the charts never to be seen again.
--Iron Maiden made the real $ off of touring & merchandise (they had a mascot which helped merchandise sales greatly.)
--Mandrake would be in the same boat. But of course Mandrake couldn't go on tour (could they?) Worse for them is that I don't believe they're the most popular distro. So how well could this idea actually work?
--In any event using your "fans" as a business model is a really stupid idea.
---
This
Perhaps Mandrake will give you a cool black T-shirt with all the contributors names on it for your $.
Actually, since the Packers are non-profit, they really don't make money. It really wouldn't be a BIG difference anyway since the stock offering is basically an elaborate fundraiser. Packers were smart in doing this decades ago, and offering shares again a few years ago. Go Pack! :)
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Its cheaper since the firm and their underwriters don't have to file paperwork in all states where the stock will be issued to the general public.
Thats the good news.
Bad news is that prospective investors must be "accredited"; under SEC regulation D section 501, you must have either a net worth of $1 million, or an annual income of at least $200,000 for the previous two years (and a reasonable expectation of this income continuing in the near future).
And before you piss and moan, its all done to protect the "little guy" from fraudsters and such (by no mean implying the good folks at Mandrake are of such ilk).
A message from our sponsor
Most people see the word investment and immediately think of it in terms of economics: an investment is property or another possession acquired for future financial return or benefit. On the other hand, this situation seems to invite another definition of investment: commitment, as of time or support.
If I were to buy into Mandrake in this way (not necessarily saying that I would), my reason for investment wouldn't be for financial gain. My investment would be to offer support to the company so that they can survive the current unstable market and continue to provide services to the open source community in the future. The more people we have working full time on open source software, the better it is going to get. As open source software continues to improve, it begins to look like a much more valid solution to companies interested in any sort of software investments.
Most likely, I won't make a dime from such a purchase, but I can be assured of one thing in this situation: my investment would help support the open source movement in general by supporting a company whose direction and business model I agree with. I find this much more satisfactory than investing in a company with a business model and business practices that directly oppose what I believe in, in the name of turning a quick buck.
DevolverDevolver's Homepage... more fun than a box of crackerjacks.
i own win95, 98 and NT4.0
i've used mandrake 6.0 - 8.0
mandrake has been more fun than windows, it's been just as useful, yeah, it's worth it.
thing is i don't mind spending my money on product provided that product is good. i've paid for windows only b/c it's the right thing to do. sure i bought NT4.0 with a student discount, but i'm not into stealing.
i prefer mandrake to windows and it's just a perk that i can get it free (cheaply). however, if they don't get any cash for it, the likelyhood that it's development will slow or stop rises. yes, mandrake is a product, a good product, and it's worth paying for. i think that somewhere down the line i need to show my grattitude and give something back.
if nothing else, it's like saying "thank you"
Silly slashdot, sigs are for kids!
I wouldn't exactly buy a product just because I liked and understood it. The idea behind stock ownership is that you are buying a piece of the company with the expectation that you will profit. When you buy stock liking it isn't good enough. You also have to take into account what the price is for that piece of the company. What about how the company earns? Or its potential to earn? It's sectors outlook in the market? If Mandrake has a economic outlook that suits you, then buy it! But don't just contribute money to alleviate guilt! Keep in mind this is a for-profit firm. Invest if you want, but don't contribute.
I might chip in some money. As long as Mandrake realizes all the responsibilites and restrictions placed on a publicly traded entity. As long as they're doing this for the right reasons, yeah for them. And heck, who knows, one day it could be worth more than M$.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
I realize you are trying to be funny, but if someone hates Slashdot, why the heck would they be using it? It's not like Slashdot has a monopoly on news-- unless you count Jon Katz.
I do not have a signature
Seems like the best way to support them would be to buy their distribution, even though you can download it for free.
sorry, but the Reg A offering the article mentions isn't technically a private placement, it's a small offering. The Reg D offering you mention *is* a private placement, though, so you're right about that -- except that there are several ways to do a private placement, and the one you're talking about doesn't require investors to be accredited, or even sophisticated. The $1 million max offering is a Rule 504 offering. The other two Reg D offerings -- Rule 505 (limited at $5 million) and 506 (unlimited) -- don't require accredited investors. The reason that 501 has that definition is that the two offerings have limitations on the number of purchasers, and accredited investors -- among other classes of individuals -- are not counted as purchasers for the purposes of the limitations. In other words, investors in Reg D private placements don't have to be accredited.
Would it make sense to invest $1000 in Mandrakesoft? What would you get for your money? Perhaps you'd get five more releases of Mandrake Linux. (Nobody is expecting to make a profit or even get any money back, it seems.) So you're paying $200 per release -- these releases come about 3-4 times as quickly as Windows or MacOS, don't forget. Is it worth it?
Don't get me wrong, I really like (and use) Mandrake-Linux and the guys at Mandrakesoft have been great to me, but you'd do them much more good by suggesting a way for them to make money than by giving them $1000. Once they have your great idea in hand, they can sell goods and/or services for profit and survive as long as their market will have them.
Dave
Andamooka: Open support for open content.
Not everyone is in shares to make money (well, obviously, most are). Many companies offer special perks to shareholders like discounts, special events etc, as well as the dividends. However, there are many sleeping dragons that could move in above the Mandrake village come an IPO. Most of the money will inevitably come not from geeks with a spare $1000, but from large company funds with a spare $1m. It is these, rather than the small investor that will control the company direction.
Mandrake seems to have done pretty well so far in getting the newbie-friendly-yet-feature-packed balance to the distro, but who's to say that the big funds won't use their clout at AGM's to steer it towards a different balance? Would the small investors still feel "part of the team" then?
There seems to be some parallels with demutualisation of building societies in the UK. Mandrake is considering a move from a company run for the benefit of its users (or at least one that has managed to involve them an awful lot) to one which will inevitably be a lot more driven by commercial pressures. Since the conversion to banks, many of the old building societies have reduced savings rates, increased charges and increased mortgage rates. Would the price of Mandrake and the other distro producers' going public be incompatibility between them to lock customers in, or injunctions accusing each other of stealing code (AT&T/BSD, anyone)?
Wish I had a fistful of Krispy Kreme instead of my worthless tech stocks. Ask yourself which people are going to be using more of, doughnuts or Mandrake, and invest accordingly.
Making business decisions with your heart can give you heart disease. -- Harvey Mackay
Oops. Maybe I gave away the fact that I think casinos are stupid.
From what little I understand about economics, this is how it's supposed to work: You buy stock in a company because you want to "go into business" with them. You are becoming an owner. Would you start a business that you didn't want to? No? Then why invest that way?
If you simply buy stock because you believe it will go up, and everyone else does the same - until it goes down, at which point everyone abandons it, then you have needless growth and decline.
Money is a resource, just like time, code, or anything else. Give as much of each of those as you can. I'll bet lots of newbies (like me) aren't up to coding or documenting yet. But, if they want to get into Linux, and want to see it grow, money is the best way for them to do that.
>you shouldn't invest in a company which does things you believe are immoral, and you should always check to find out. This pretty well rules out mutual funds
And why is that? You can find out the companies and bonds that mutual funds invest in and perform the same type of morality check, can you not?
On another note, I disagree with your opinion. Invest in companies that make money - period.
>This is _not_ donations. How on Earth could buying ownership of a company be considered donations?
In other posts, many people said they would be happy donating. If people are going to donate, consider worthwile causes like cancer research, orphans, or the United Way. This is not meant to be a troll, but seriously people, F- mandrake - save a child.
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
But, seriously, this is not the best of times to think about IPO's. it may sound k3wl to them, but they need solid backing, that meens cash, that means support from banks & firms.
the community is great, and i would probably buy a few shares myself, but Mandrake needs more than a few enthusiastic *nix users to make this worthwhile
This sig is intentionally left blank
By the way there is not any information about which market they plan to go. I guess a European market. Does anybody know about the best European markets to go public for a tech company?
Considering that the current market capitalization for Red Hat Inc. is $911.5M, I wonder what would be a correct market capitalization for Mandrakesoft... 50% of RedHat's? 80%? More?
Wealthy investors often have a portion of their funds that work towards issues the investor thinks is important, rather than simply chasing the highest resturns availible.
Why not pay a developer to develop something you need?
Rather than invest in a company that is not going to do anything other than what companies do.
Let's see for a $1,000 what can I expect from a developer. How about Logitech web cam support, MS game controllers, USB exotica etc There are plenty of little things needing developing.
A developer wanting to contribute might choose something that was going to get him some readies.
Is there a site for this? The person fronting the money would do the QA. The developer is free to quit whenever he wants. The only downside is the prospect of the developer not getting paid, but individuals tend to be more honest thsn companies.
Maybe what Mandrake should also do is give away X number of stocks to people when they buy the Mandrake distro. I dont know what the legal (SEC) implication of this is, but this way Mandrake could show good sales figures, which thoretically may drive up its stock price, and at the same time, the person who got the stocks when he bought the distro gets a little richer.
after 140 or so comments posted:
It's your money. Do what makes you happy with it.
Ah, didn't see that Regulation-A bit. Whoops.:}
But still...AFIAK, there's a hard-limit on these RegA "not-so-public" IPO's that's really low. Like, $4M or $5M or something. Great for a coffee shop, but not for a software company with a burn rate of $1M/month.
IANAL, but I'm fairly sure that if Mandrake is a US corporation, the SEC wouldn't allow that. They have fairly strict rules about how private companies can take in investment money. If the company wants to sell stock to the general public, even on EBay or something, it requires an IPO. You know, a "real" one.
I like Mandrake, I put it on my wife's computer to move her from Windows (at her request, she got sick of blue screening several times/day). Supporting a company sometimes means cash money rather than contributing code or what have you. As for the desirability of doing so, if the idea of supporting a company that is promoting open source is offensive to you, then you might want to consider that the alternative is a 100% Microsoft dominated world.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
I dont know how good of an investment Miscrosoft would be considered now, but back when it went public if you had purchased a few hundred shares you would be set for life now. Replace Microsoft's name with any of the following and having a crstal ball and buying shares at IPO time and holding would generally make you very wealthy.
IBM
AOL
DELL
Berkshire Hathaway
ebay
The reason this will never work, is because, in my eyes, mandrake is for newbies. I loved mandrake, now it makes me sick. Are any uses that have used for more than a year THAT loyal to mandrake?
I think you've forgotten that ESR's windfall was entirely dependent on the shares of VA Linux stock he had been given. As we all know, LNUX is next to worthless. If ESR had sold his shares at the peak of valuation, then he might be in a position to donate some money, but according to insider trading reports for LNUX, he has not yet done so. At this point, his best bet is to hope the stock makes a modest recovery, perhaps to the neighborhood of 20...
Hi, I'm a pretentious cock who will make some gay comment about ignoring AC posts here.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
For Mandrake and RH, it MIGHT work, considering they're popular and both Linux companies that could have IPOs. But, most of us don't want to blow a grand on something we might not get a profit for, but thats the stock market, but if you look at the two distros, they're likely a good buy now for the long term because right now, they're paying overhead and would break even and a profit a few more years down the road.
Btw, why not do this with VA Linux?
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
Maybe if they sold Mandrake sock puppets. Then, even if the company went under, I could still make some off of them just on the nostalgia factor.
Dancin Santa
Starbucks has better coffee beans, IMHO. Tully's makes much better espresso drinks, though. Funny, I actually just fired off an email to Tully's management yesterday about their Spin drink.
Dancin Santa
Anyone wanna be the first Vice Chair??
;-)
Only if our financials are not too closely inspected.
Dancin Santa
Why the hell would I buy stock in a company that's so broke they have to ask for donations?? Ok, i know they didn't ask, but clearly they're in financial trouble, would a company like that really make an intelligent investment?
The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout Apr 21-27
But seriously, RedHat has a market share of 55%, the are the most well known linux distribution. If there is one distro i would buy stock in, it would be RedHat.
I think it's a great alternative to simply asking for donations. They would still be getting capital from the people who like the company and want to help them out, but those people would be getting a little something in return: their own little piece of the company (even if it's not neccecarily a profitable piece).
I'm a little strapped for cash right now, but if I had the money to spare, I'd definatly be interested in purchasing some of their stock. I'm not an experienced programmer or developer, so I can't contribute to the open-source community in the traditional way. This would be a great way for me and others like me to give a little back, and even for you guys who can contribute code and programming effort to give a little extra.
DennyK
Huh? Mandrake can do this without having to purchase their own stock on an exchange. If they go for selling their stock in a way that doesn't require an exchange they can distribute it pretty much any way they want. I think that the SEC rule rquiring the stock value to be less than $5,000,000 sucks but if they wanted they could offer all of the stock as a bonus when buying one of their packs. Hopefully their is a way in French law to allow them to offer a reasonable amount of stock directly to their customers. I am a US citizen but to the best of my knowledge there is nothing in US law that can prevent me from purchasing their stock if it is offered in France. I want them to offer their stock with a DRIP plan. I believe MD can be around a really long time and a DRIP would allow me to achieve a sizeable stake in the company over time.
"If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
Especially since Rambus has been getting their clock cleaned in court. Anybody who invested in Rambus is guilty of not doing enough research. There is nothing coming out recently about the company that is really news. I can remember reading in the computer press in 94 or so about their trying to pull a fast one on JEDEC and the information was available for anybody who looked for it. In my opinion anyone who purchased that company deserved to get taken to the cleaners.
"If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
The one thing you all keep missing is that Mandrake is the most community oriented of the larger Linx distros. They have a built in market for a sale of shares to people who believe in their company. If I were in their shoes I would try very hard to make sure those people were included in any effort to sell shares. One of the biggest failings of the Linux IPO era was that the people who used the product and cared about the companies didn't get to buy in. They were the people willing to hold for the long term and would have benefited the companies most as shareholders. Instead the people who got to actually purchase the shares were the people and companies that wanted to make a fast buck and when things went south raised the biggest ruckus. I will purchase MAndrake shares if made available in a low cost way because I think the company has a way of doing business that can be profitable and satisfying to me as a shareholder. I would never purchas MS or Rambus stock because I don't like the way they do business but Mandrake does it right. I may not get rich but at least I'll be able to look in the mirror and see something that I respect.
"If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
Mandrake is sold full price. They allow free downloads but if you want any of the extra goodies then you purchase one of their boxed sets. I always purchase a boxed set because I like the convenience of having the base distro on hand.
"If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
lessee....when proprietary software was the only real choice, and my computer was pure MicroSloth, I could hardly do anything with it, there was no documentation, and heavy tools were an extra expense over and above the almost 200 bucks I paid for the OS...I coulnd't do much with my PC, except stare at the pretty blue sceen (or worse yet, chain directory errors. Then I discovered Slackware...I mastered user level config, and went deeper into the system (and deeper, and deeper........) Now I have a real job, because I can work comfortably with most decent OS's... So all my income above 200 bucks a week I owe directly to open source and Slackware Linux Sure....pass the cup...I thousand, hell...I'm buiding a career out of this stuff...MS would have me flipping burgers and wishing thier new OS would run on my old hardware!!!
Debian - It's an open source community, why are you still in your closet hacking on that slack-box, kid? Come out and
I have to agree that Mandrake is a more value added distro than most...it includes a wealth of unique tools for making the system work...albiet only with mdk binaries!!! It is definately the easiest distro to get up and running in...though as stated somewhere else in this thread, for heavy use, it's shimmer fades after a while...like when absokutely NO commercial binaries ran on my 8.0 install, no fresh apps compiled, redhat rpms didn't work, and mdk binaries are scarcer than heatstroke in Antartica! C'mon...going open source means a little more work for the user, perhaps, such as keeping up with hardware specs...keep a notebook w/ such info, because paper doesn't suffer from file corruption. (Never use a coffee soluble ink!)
Debian - It's an open source community, why are you still in your closet hacking on that slack-box, kid? Come out and
Personally I agree with this, there isn't a compelling reason to buy the stock for me. There are betterways for users to support the company and thats to improve it via any way that you can. Investing money in the market is not something that is for "fun", its to make money (at least it is for me). I am not going to give money to mandrake and not expect some financial improvement on the position. And in addition to this, the market isn't ready for this stock. Maybe 3 or 4 months down the road the market will look better, but for now I have better uses of my money.
right after I smoked a big bag of crack, maybe.
This would not be an issue of Mandrake was sold full-price as a product and not distributed for free. Mandrake is a good linux distro, I don't see why they just don't sell it exclusively.
I don't have $1000 to shell out for a stock that won't make returns. But I do have about a hundred dollars that I spend every two years on a new Operating System.
Not only that, but if Mandrake sold well, other companies might write more software for it, and it might get better driver support.
If mandrake was right next to win2k at the store...
Oh god, I'm having capitalism hallucinations where people trade value for value!
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Paying for your software. Smid
Stocks are supposed to be to support a company, not to just buy for the fun of having it. I dont care how much I loved a company, I would not buy shares of that company just because I thought it was neat.
--Note to self. Add witty sig here, someday...
The bottomline is that this company's efforts support a way of developping software in a way that lots of us /. folks like and believe in as almost an ideology. The people that work there, perhaps even their leaders, are probably /. readers themselves. It is not bad to support a company that represents part of an ideology that you support. In fact it's great in my opinion.
However, I do have some practical problems with this. Why wouldn't Mandrake be able to raise money the 'normal' way? Some investors may just be braindead and put their money in the hype and Linux is not the hype right now... but there are also investors out there that invest with a long term view. Does the 'market' always represent the value of a company and their potential? I do not think so, but I do think that when the market has NO confidence whatsoever in a company, their chances of survival get rather slim. If MandrakeSoft doesn't think a regular IPO is do-able, does this mean they think the market will not favor 'YALC' ? And if the market doesn't, are their survival chances slim to none? And if they are, wouldn't investing money in them, even through a regulation A offering just be the same as throwing your money in the ocean??
I would love to invest money in a company like MandrakeSoft if I *knew* it would guarantee their survival and not just go into a bottomless pit. This is why I invested money in VA Linux as well. I believe that the crunch at the bottom of the market right now is squeezing out companies that have not yet reached maturity. This crunch can kill them before they even get there, while nurturing them might get them through this crisis.
I'm a greedy capitalist pig, as my ex's from communist Poland and Vietnam have told me - but even to me, there are things more valuable than money. Ideas are the things that make money possible, and an idea I support is worth some financial investment. Giving back, as every person of standards should. The ideas I would be supporting by contributions are the very ideas that created the market that I make so much money in. Perhaps you should reconsider your values - life is the ultimate value, and anything that improves that life is very valuable. GNU, Linux, etc, have definitely improved my life.
think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
... largely lies in the fact that this money will serve more than one purpose. First, it will infuse the company with fresh funds to expand/sustain operations until overhead thins and profit comes. Second, it will be a show of support for and from and of the community, an example of independent minds, many of high intelligence, agreeing on the same common principles as well as products. This would increase the feeling of community itself, most likely, and be a banner waved at investors claiming the strength of our common interest. Much good could come of this, and were it another distro, one more to my liking, I would gladly liquidate some AMD stock and grab some of say, Slack or fbsd.
think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
I would buy Mandrake Stock if it was offered to loyal users. I looked into getting in on the RedHat and other Linux related IPOs and was unable to because I didn't have a gazillion dollars with some high-end brokerage and I have not been an open source developer.
What I am, is a Linux Users Group founder and currently the closest thing we have to a president. The LUG runs Mandrake on its Linux Lab and we advocate the use of that release to our members and first time users. As a group, we have been very pleased with the ease of configuration as well as the initial tools that come with this distribution.
Over the next few months we are planning on adding to our membership and looking into hosting an Installfest or Linux Day at a bookstore or local computer shop. At those events we would use Mandrake as it would make it easier for people to grasp the complexities of the Linux operating system.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
After the fall of RH and VA Linux stock, it's hard to imagine that anybody would want to invest huge sums of money into such stock. Of course, that has a tendency to drive the long term stock price down, making it cheaper to buy, making it more enticing, causing more people to buy it, driving the long term price up. Nonetheless, unless you love Linux, you're not going to buy this stock.
----
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
So all of you apparent open source "supporters " aren't willing to support Mandrake by buying their shares unless it makes you money? Wow, talk about hypocritical. If Mandrake wants to raise money by selling stock to their supportersa instead of whoring out on NASDAQ, then count me in. I would rather know my money is going to further the development than paying some CEO or VP of Marketing a million a year. But maybe that's just me.
-
-------------------------------------------------
My sig of choice is Marlboro
I am sure we all remember the rise of Linux IPO's.
Redhat, VA Linux, Caldera, etc. Linux was becoming mainstream. However the mainstream idea of Linux was at the time like disco to the 1970s, a fad.
The rise of a Mandrake IPO, however, has the potentiality of violating the idea that fads die and possibly bring disco back. It is a strong distribution, end-user and non-end-user geared. Its popularity has seemed to be surpassing my home state's distribution of RedHat. Its combination of applications with interface has given a console OS a spark of beauty.
If I could afford to buy shares, I quite possibly would. However, I cannot afford the market for fun. I would at least need to yield some gain on my risk (any market is a risk, not just the concern of Open Source IPOs).
I suggest Mandrake go for it. Even if it may not capture the United States attention, Europe may have a strong interest. French-based. Focus on internationalization. As the Euro continues to consolidate, software needs to be there to take it all home. Can Mandrake take up the challenge?
Second your opinion, although I'm a startup casualty with post-schematic syndrome. Mandrake is my favorite distro and I feel sad of the prospect that it might disappear because of the want to IPO. Are there any companies that want to simply have a sustainable and profitable private company?
I want to own stock in companies that I believe in. I really do. But stocks appear to me to have little to do with the *company* and so much more to do with the *market*. If I buy Mandrake stock and Linux comes into favor on the stock market again, my stock goes up. If it goes out of favor, it goes down. There's little connection to whether or not Mandrake is delivering quality products to its customers, which to me is what a company is all about.
If there was a way I could own stock that directly reflected the success of the company rather than the ebb and flow of the market, I'd do it in a second.
The Green bay packers thing asside. It costs a huge amount of money to go public, and the people who you need to buy your stock are not a bunch of geeks who will buy a few thousand dollars of it, but managers of mutual funds and pentions etc. Those guys will buy $20 million in stock in something if they think its a good deal, even a long shot good deal. Those guys really want to see numbers saying that they are going to make money. Because thats their job.
And hell I wouldn't drop $1,000 on a stock if I din't think I was going to make money. I make think the Mandrake folks are cool. But If I have a spare $1,000 sitting about, I'm probably going to use it to pay off some of my mortgage.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Sure, owning a little stock won't give me much say individually, but possibly if a lot of users owned a little stock...
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Yet we are turning to what is virtually a charity model to support the companies who are producing the things we like, even as organizations who provide services to the have-nots and disadvantaged go begging in silicon valley. Is this sector myopia, fanboyism, or something else? Maybe the dog-eat-dog ethic of the 90's has created a contempt for non-profit professional efforts. Is there a problem with focusing Free Software development in a .org context if acting like a business isn't working? Why give money to Mandrake (or VA Linux, for that matter) instead of to the FSF or one of the BSDs or other projects, or an educational institution, directly?
As far as I can tell, just because Mandrake is selling their stock doesn't mean that is has to be publicly traded. In fact, shares of the Green Bay Packers are not listed on any exchange that I know of.
The idea, I suppose, is not so much that one buys Mandrake stock as a financial investment, but that one buys Mandrake stock in order to (1) financially support and maybe (2) have some power for directing a Linux-friendly company.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
I'd like to see it so each time I buy a Mandrake product I get a certain amount of stock with it. I can't afford to spend $1000 on stocks but I would be willing to buy boxed sets, manuals, tshrits, etc which I usually wouldn't if I got the stock too. This would essentially make it a customer owned company. Along with giving stock to employees and opensource developers I think this would create a net of interest in the company that would not be likely to sell off on a whim as the average investor might.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
OK, ALL else aside about how to do this, IPO status, etc. this is an interesting idea for one thought:
.). Can an Open Source company be reconcieved of as something other than the usual corporate concept?
The idea people may invest without expecting a financial return, the idea of using money to support something instead of your own profit.
This opens up a lot of other interesting ideas as well - can companies take charity or donations (how much money could a Linux company raise if it took donations from various Penguinholics . .
Coming down from the blue sky, one simpl barrier I see, beyond the questions of proper procedure, is greed. A site I do some admin work for offered people a chance to donate some money and get some extra features as a gift - and prompty some ignorant a$$ argued about "getting his money's worth" without understanding that sometimes an idea is worth supporting . . .
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Well, if they did this, I might buy a couple hundred dollars worth. Not that I would expect to make money anytime soon, or maybe ever, but because I like Mandrake.
The reason it's different from donations is that presumably, as a stockholder, I would have some input into the direction of the company. Maybe they could have shareholder voting on company direction questions over the internet - one vote per share... like, should we make Mozilla the default browser in Mandrake 8.1? Should we continue shipping proprietary software in the boxed version? Should we hire more developers? What should the developers work on? Of course, as a private company the CEO is ultimately responsible, and shareholders can really just vote to replace the CEO and board. Or something, I'm no expert on corparate law, especially for a French company.
But anyway, my point is that it would not be just a donation to Mandrake.
If this is really successfull, Mandrake might end up kind of like an incorporated version of Debian, just as user/shareholder-driven, but with a better installer and less politics. (/me grins, ducks flames...)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it will fly. Most geeks make pretty good money ($30k - $100k/year). These people could buy $100 or even $1000 of stock and not have to eat ramen (but might eat ramen anyway). What could make this idea sucessfull are big money investors. The big money geeks can afford to invest $10k or even $100k without the expectations of significant returns. But the number of millionaire geeks has plummeted in the last year (Hi Rob). Without them, I don't think this idea can work.
-B
The issue of buying stock in a company is to purchase the stock at a price with the expectation (or gamble if you will) that the company's stock will be worth more in the future.
:)
Now I've also seen posts that recommended just donating. Well, if you're content to donate money, that means that you're content to shell out a certain amount of cash with no expectation of a return on that investment. In that case, why NOT buy stock in the company? If it completely tanks, hey you were content to lose it all anyways. But if it succeeds, your faith will be rewarded.
I don't feel linux companies suffer from the same rap as a lot of the dot com companies did. Linux companies, for the most part, actually HAVE A PRODUCT THAT PEOPLE WANT!!!!!! The problem was, with the collapse of all the worthless dotcoms, the linux companies were effected as well because the industry as a whole took a nosedive. There were no cashhappy corps using linux boxes, purchasing network equipment, etc, and the ripple effect affects the entire industry.
But the strong useful companies can survive. Investors may be wary, but to hell with them. Companies can survive without investors and they're better off in the long run if they have a business plan that does not rely in whole or in part on a large quantity of infused cash. Meaning, the company survives on its own revenue stream. Imagine THAT of all things!
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
You are taking the 'Righteous(sp?)' approach. But let me tell you why 'just linux' won't fly (atleast for me). In my current box, Linux Mandrake install is about 1.5G. Linux kernel itself is what around 50Meg, maybe. What I am saying is Mandrake put in a lot of effort tying all the pieces together and put out a very nice distribution so anyone (well almost) can use it.
:-)
Gone are the days, where you have to
- ask experts about partitioning your harddrive
- dust up that monitor manual and lookup the supported frequencies to get X to work.
- Tweaking the Xconfig to get the right colordepth or mouse working.
Now I can install mandrake
- in 20 mins
- without manually adding any 'device recognition'
- and have Kde running with Anti Aliased fonts in a very cool desktop.
For me that is value add. sure I can download X and do a 'make World' and QT and Kde...etc. But my time is more worth than anything, and I would rather buy a polished distribution to get me past the install.
Okay given all that, I doubt I'll ever depart from Mandrake anytime soon, as long as they continue the current trend. I just donated some money throught their donation page. I'd love to own a piece of the company b/c I know some day they are going to be great. And who knows, I might even get a return on my investment.
I don't buy into the notion of 'these companies are ripping off customres to ship linux which is FREE'. The value added in a distribution is 'real value for me'
man that was a long whine
LinuxLover
There are a million methods of choosing stocks, but the questions you asked at the end of your post are the wrong ones. They lead investors down the dark path of falling in love with their stock.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Why would I invest in something that I have absolutely no clue about? (If I was buying stock that is - bonds, mutual funds, etc would be different). I invest in industries that I have extra information about - industries in my field. Palm is an example of this - they were horribly overpriced, and I identified that. They're not so overpriced now, and their APIs and programming support are above board. I've used them in many projects. So I buy the stock because I expect the product to grow and hence the stock price to raise, making me money. I'd be stupid not to take advantage of any specialized knowledge I might have as an engineer.
The question that I've found useful is not those that you mentioned, but this simple one: "If money wasn't an issue, would I buy this entire company (Price x # of shares) at this price?"
Obviously, that's a good metric, and one that I use. But I don't invest in companies that I don't understand, either. The point of me investing money myself is to capitalize on technologies or fields that I have specialized knowledge in. Other people might argue that.
Palm, RedHat, Amazon.. yes, at their highs, they sure did. But at a few bucks a share (and slashed market caps), I'm willing to gamble a couple thousand on my gut instinct and experience. It's only money :). (Well, I wouldn't TOUCH amazon, because I think online selling is crap, I like buying stuff and getting my paws on it right away :). But that's my opinion. I made out like a bandit on AMD - I bought them when they dropped because I knew their chips were the best out there, and they were what I used, and everyone I knew used - and I've been rewarded for that.
Ymmv, of course.
..don't panic
If Mandrake has a economic outlook that suits you, then buy it! But don't just contribute money to alleviate guilt! Keep in mind this is a for-profit firm. Invest if you want, but don't contribute.
Scared of us dirty hippies undermining the stock market with altruistic motives for investing? They are a for profit company, but they are different in that the end product is something that I'm free to do whatever I want with. That can't be said for any closed-source software company, and the same metrics don't apply IMHO.
If I buy the stock, I reduce the supply, and hence will raise the price (maybe not noticably, but in volume...). By keeping the price up, you keep the companies shareholders - of which you are now one - motivated and optimistic. Mandrake would be issuing the stock to raise money afterall! (and you would be buying in hopes of getting SOMETHING back). If that something is another version or two (or dozen) of the software, what's wrong with that? You got good utility for your money. Maybe mandrake will turn a nice profit, and the company and price will grow even more, too.
Nothing wrong with that. Even if you're not a dirty linux hippie. Heh.
..don't panic
Now you've got a company that holds patents on every viable memory type for personal computers. You know that PC's are selling like hotcakes and that means memory is too, which all boils down to huge royalties for Rambus.
Except that it's also obvious their patents were completely out to lunch and their behaviour bordered on (and may have been) criminal. However, I do see that RAM is more and more important, and processor speed is becoming less so - might I be more interested in companies that produce RAM, very likely! Betting the farm on one company is stupid, and so is falling in love with a stock. I'm not talking about either. If I see a product I use everyday, see lots of other people using, I like it, the company is doing well - but their price is down - then I'm going to buy. Just like I'll sell it when I think the price is too high. Example, Honda Motor Co, or 3M.
It makes sense to limit your individual stock purchases to those areas you have some special knowledge about, but if you fall in love with a stock like PALM or RHAT or LNUX because they mirror what you think, you may be screwing yourself
Or maybe not. Nobody's saying that's all you should invest in. My point is that if Mandrake offered stock to raise money, and you bought it because you liked mandrake, there's nothing wrong with that. If you expect to be a millionaire, well, that's going to bite you in the ass. It's about making an informed desision, and that's one of the key ideas. It's easier when you know the product and the company. I stayed the hell away from Nortel because they hired the most clueless idiots for YEARS from my university. I didn't like that, so I shyed away for companies I knew good things about.
LNUX is a bad example. Ick. Not enough valued-added there for me to bet my money on right now. Palm and Redhat are different, IMHO, although Redhat might be getting back up into overvalued territory now. Redhat's getting close to profitability, and if linux is going anywhere, it'll probably be through them or IBM.
Remember, there are a lot of people making money on MSFT stock.
Hell yeah! Monopolies are great places to invest. I know lots of people making money off of a nice divendend-paying stock - Aliant, the local telco here. Whether or not the microsoft one will last is a matter of debate, personally I don't think it will long term, or more correctly: the high profits their current price is based on will not hold in the long term, so I see no incentive to buy.
..don't panic
"I might buy $1000 worth myself if they did this, just for the hell of it. Would you?"
Well, if was apparently like all the other geeks around here and crapped bricks of $100 bills sure.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I was being generous with figures, and based it on a extreme lowball, trying to give an all around generic base.
Want Root?
...maybe the better way for the LINUX community to support Mandrake is to petition those very few OpenSource-minded individuals made obscenely wealthy by the recent boom (ESR, I'm talkin' about you!) to become benefactors of Mandrake.
:-p), and then have competitions between the corporations that sell a bunch of merchandise to make money....
I mean, come on Eric, do you really need another Soviet-issue RPG-7G or M-72 light anti-tank weapon at this point? You've got enough to win most arguments you could get into.
I'm being semi-serious here. I'm not optimistic about Mandrake's survival if they intend to pass-the-plate around the linux community and hope that they get enough in tithes to stay alive. The sports franchise examples offered by Mr. Bryar assumes that the high regard for Mandrake of the linux-loving population somehow equates to the profound devotion and civic-pride one has for a local sports team, and for attending local sporting events. Regardless of the enthusiasm of the community for Mandrake, I'm not optimistic that this would work.
Maybe the best option is to have big Linux companies create their own sports franchises, with something geeky-fun like Internet televised BattleBots or laser-tag tournaments featuring executives/programmers at the various companies (officiated by Geeks In Space,
Also, their English grammar is tragicomically bad
:o)
"Yeah, them friggin Frogs yad think thay could rwite propah English, like um, dunno, like in Slashdot posts ?"
English has become a tool for international communication. As long as what you write can be understood by the majority of your users (and this is the case for Mandrake's texts), proper grammar/spelling is irrelevant. Blaming software developers for their poor mastering of The One True Language of Civilization and Progress is like blaming Arthur C. Clarke for the historical inaccuracies in "2001".
Thomas Miconi
Along this same line of thought, I was thinking that it would be better if there was some kind of financial blanket that covered the entire Open Source / Linux / Free Software (whatever) movement:
This of this as similar to government grants. Anyone can apply for a piece of the money, but they have to provide certain justifications and report on their spending. The governing body would review applications, solicit money from donors and distribute money to the grant winners. Presumably this body would be made up of reporesentatives from all aspects of the movement: the for-profit companies that provide Linux distros, non-profit groups like FSF, unassociated developers, and user groups.
I think that this would probably be a pretty successful way of organizing the direction of commercialized Open Source. Work could still go on independantly by avocational developers, but it would also help discourage duplication of effort and forking among larger commercial projects.
Does such a thing exist yet? Anyone wanna be the first Vice Chair??
Though I am certainly no Packer fan myself (I'm from Minnesota) I have to stand up for every Packer fan I have ever met. The Packers are able to survive, even thrive, in probably the smallest market in professional sports. This is due, in no small part, to having the most loyal fans of ANY professional sports team. The waiting list is very long for Packers tickets -- a good friend just got his two season tickets 28 years after his parents put his name on the waiting list when he was born. The list is surely longer now than it was then. Home games for the Packers are completely sold out for the foreseeable future and this where half (approx.) the home games are played in weather well below freezing. I'd say the middle of the league in revenue isn't so bad at all. In addition they have some stadium proposals out that would fix the current small stadium size (and some of these plans are absolutely spectacular).
Any professional sports team with fans even half as loyal should be proud.
The Green Bay Packers MAKE money, RedHat, VA, Mandrake, etc. do not.
I'm thinking that Mandrake could (for example) offer a GPL-version copy of their software and five shares of MandrakeSoft for (say) $80, via their website.
Hmmmm.... a lot of people would sell, except for the trading cost. As long as the trading cost is a significant fraction of the stock value, they won't sell.
If you get a cert, can you sell it without going through a broker? If you can, there goes the trading cost.
At any rate, this would force Mandrake to purchase shares (possibly on the open market) to close the deal. If the stock ever did go up, they'd be squeezed into a really bad deal for each purchase.
It's a much better deal to simply offer the shares directly to customers because... 1. They know the customers are interested in holding the stock, at least for a little while. 2. They can accumulate shares before they offer them. 3. They can choose not to offer shares directly and/or they can choose when to purchase their own shares (e.g., during an October panic).
Of course, IANAFinancial analyst so I might be missing the mark somewhere.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
NewsForge is a subsidiary of VA Linux (NASDAQ, LNUX) as is Slashdot. So, they are not competitors in the traditional sense. For some reason, LNUX wants more people to take an interest in NewsForge. Why I don't know, since Slashdot is a valuable franchise... or it would be if they offered Slash-based site setup and customization services. Hint, hint, concerned stockholders... recurring revenue streams please.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Could Slashdot Sell Stock To Users Who Hate It?
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Also, their English grammar is tragicomically bad (ie, in MandrakeUpdate).
By the way, if anyone has the libstdc++-devel rpm from the days of 7.1...
At $5.45 I'm not ever going to get rich from owning Redhat stock. I'm not a programmer and don't have a lot of spare time to donate to beta testing or contributing to open development. So I own a few shares and I buy a Distro once in a while. (Not always Redhat, sometimes Mandrake.) I just think of it as chipping in for the cause.
Look, if Mandrake is a worthwhile project but can't make money, it should become a non-profit. People could donate without worrying about whether it was somehow appropriate to do so. Now the founders of Mandrake wouldn't make the big bux, but so what?
sulli
RTFJ.
The thing is that buying Red Hat (post-IPO) stock doesn't benefit Red Hat -- it benefits the seller of the stock. While there might be runoff benefits of this (one less angry shareholder who will vote out the top management?), you're not doing and big favors for Red Hat. If you really want to financially support the company, you'd be better off buying their product (their service & support in this case), or donating your money to the company directly (if such a mechanism exists)
I find that it would be one way that I would give back. Why? I'm not a coder--I'm a user. I'm working my way up to be a coder, but if I contributed to something like a distro right now, I'd fear that I'd screw it up. So why not give the distro some of my money as well as feel like I own a piece of that distro?
-- Geof F. Morris
Business models that rely on OS need to admit that they are businesses, just like their competitors, and recognize that without the crutch of proprietary IP they need to be twice as creative as their "Old Economy" competitors. Consumers that rely on OS based businesses need to recognize that free beer, as much as we like it, does not keep a business afloat.
Packers-style investing can help out a lot in the near term, although it isn't a long term panacea. Mandrake needs to be at least break-even within a few years of an IPO to prevent their stock from becoming "I Donated To Open Source" bumper stickers. It only helped Green Bay keep their team local, the management still needed to keep the franchise financially viable.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
On the other hand, I think sending a donation to Mandrake for their hard work, without any rights to say how they run their show is quite all right. It shows them that you, personally, are ecstatic about the work they do. I'm sure they'll consider your input very carefully when designing their next code release, because they want to keep you pleased for your generosity towards their cause. Also, with this system, they still don't have to listen to the guy sending them millions, because he has no 'voting' rights, he just likes giving lots of money to them just like you and the other non-millionaires.
I'd really rather not see them go public. Investors could care less about user friendliness, compatibility, and standards compliance; they're in it only for the profits. Mandrake will have to answer to its shareholders first, and its customers second. Don't we already have enough corporations doing that now? And badly, too, I might add.
Interesting synchronicity there. I'm not a coffee drinker myself, but my parents said Tully's was much better than the Starbucks behemoth. So if Tully's = Mandrake and Starbucks = Microsoft this might just work.
"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Absolutely you should be doing all of those things. However, buying a piece of the company wouldn't hurt either, especially considering that this would give us users more of a voice in the way that the company is run. Not to mention more of a motivation to get off our tushes and contribute something. :)
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
This assumes you're a programmer will skill in the area. If, for example, I'm an embedded systems guy (which I am), I might not have time to learn what mandrake needs. However, if I'm very successful, I'll command a high salary and make lots of money. I can help buy providing resources to hire someone who does have the expertise to aid in the development of the project, with the results of the $ going back out into the open source community. This seems to work really well - why would it go against the model? Obviously, this assumes you use the product and provide feedback, or you wouldn't know about it or that it needed work.
To use another classic example: If you're a lawyer and make $150/hr, and you need your house painted. The job will cost $500 and take 16 hours. You'd be stupid to save the $500 by working those 16 hours; you could do what you do best, and pay the specialist to do the work. Same applies to car repairs, etc. If painting is your hobby - like coding is for myself and others - that might be different, but for most people, that's not the case.
..don't panic
Personally I think this would only help in a short term manner, and here's why. So you plan on selling say 100,000 shares of Mandrake stock at let's be fair with the price, in accordance to whats going on around NASDAQ, 6.00 (US) which would give Mandrake an extra 600,000.00 US which is enough to hold them for a short while.
A team of 20 developers at 35,000.00 a year would leave the company 100,000.00 a year under, not including office space, equipment, etc. So unless they plan on selling a massive amount of stock with people willing to continously buy from them, how could they expect to recoup any money to pay back investors who purchased it from them?
So there stock goes up let's say to twice that amount, because more people think it's a good idea. Ok eventually they'd still have to turn a hell of a lot of profit to keep the investors happy else they'd fall miserably, as many companies have within the past few years.
I wish them the best, but I doubt it would work. If you take a look at some of the strong companies in their field, let's say Baltimore Technologies, which is one of my favorites. They specialize in security based products, and have a strong market segment, yet their stock is doing poorly (under 3.00) so what makes you think a company like Mandrake could cut it in the market, when proven companies are having a hard time...
© Pimpfolio ghetto stocks all the time
Want Root?
There are literally dozens of various instruments that Mandrake could employ to sell equity. The reasons they don't are as follows in ranking order:
1. Honest Greed. The current owners believe their equity is worth more than the probable market perception. If this is correct, the sale of equity could result in a higher than tolerable cost-of-capital. In such a case, the company may have better alternatives to raising capital, such as through various debt instruments which may provide a lower cost-of-capital or even aquistion.
2. Tax. Publically traded companies must register as C-Corps. Mandrake may not already be a C-Corp, and probably is an S-Corp. S-Corps allow for pass-through-accounting, so the corporation doesn't pay any taxes (the owners pay the taxes or in this case write off the loses). I could be the FUD master here (I'm not an accountant), but this is a possible reason.
3. Legal Mumbojumbo. Publicly traded companies must follow strict rules and regulations regardling disclosure and accounting. These restriction can severely impare smaller organizations which are still attempting to establish themselves.
Someone you trust is one of us.
It worked for Warren Buffett. One of his ideas was to buy stocks in companies with products he liked and used, and companies with products he understood. The difference between what Warren B. advocated and what XTAL seemed to be suggesting (although I'm not taking his casual comments here as XTAL's opus on investing) was investing in companies with a monopoly. The acid test was "If I have a huge supply of capital" (which Warren Buffett no doubt does) " and if I had access to all the top talent in this industry, what companies would I still be unable to compete with." With a strategy like this (and the fact that Warren is friends with Bill Gates) it is amazing he's never invested in Micro$oft. He said he never did because he didn't understand the software industry.
Sounds like a cool idea...
--rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
Usually when I invest in something, I expect to make money doing so. This is just another way to promote donations. I donate to charity, not corporations.
The stock market per se is just a way to target a more general (and much bigger) audience of investors, some (most) of which who have absolutely no idea what you do, how your product works or is engineered, etc. If you read the all time classic (in what, it's 18th printing?) How to Buy Stocks, back in the day, you knew the people who invested and ran the company.Stocks were a way to measure the amount of the investment to judge who gets what share of the profits/rewards. This has been missed by the markets, somewhere.
Would it work? Well, I'd buy some redhat if I had spare money, because I like the product. I bought a lot of Palm when the stock went down, because I like that product, too, and work with it. Same thing for AMD. Mandrake is just the same thing continued, although I'm not a mandrake user.
People are kinda supposed to understand what they're investing in, which is why I find the market insanity amusing. I buy products I use and like, and I haven't been clobbered for it e.g., 3M car wax.. 3M stickies.. 3M abrasives.. hrmm... 3M.
My advise to investors is, ask yourself: "Do I use this product? Do I like it? Do I understand it? Would I pay money for it? Would anyone else? Does that matter?", and you'll find the answer quite clear. This looks like a good idea to me, though - support a product you use and like to development continue, and you might see a return on it someday.
..don't panic
I think, if they have a good solid foothold in the industry that can't be usurped by another company, the way Red Hat does, they might want to try going public. Until then, doing so might make them even more vulnerable to the manipulations of the business-minded.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
I'm thinking that Mandrake could (for example) offer a GPL-version copy of their software and five shares of MandrakeSoft for (say) $80, via their website.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
Doesn't that kinda go against the grain of the open source model? If I want to contribute and help out mandrake, shouldn't I be writing code, giving feedback, using the product, writing documentation, etc? Think about the amount of money a professional programmer makes and the amount of money you'd have to give in order to get something done. Why not just contribute? Sure, you may not help them survive as a business, but why is that the goal?
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Selling shares of the company can be a great way to raise cash, but it also introduces a whole different set of constraints on management style. Public companies have to be much more concerned about short term finanical numbers instead of the big picture. The management has to please investors which often forces them into actions that aren't always the most prudent in order to keep the balance sheet in order. This can be a huge distraction for a young company.
Now I'm not saying Mandrake going public is necessarily a bad thing, but I do wonder if it is being done for the good of the company or if it is being done simply to make money for some venture capitalists.
Shares could be used as currency to motivate the company to support special features.
How 'bout a special site where stockholders can converge and agree upon features they'd like to see in the distro? They could then pool together in the agreed upon feature set category and wager support by allocating x shares to features they want to see.
14 shares added for journaling file system support
5 shares added for extended wireless networking features
etc
While you may only wager so many shares on a specific feature you'd like to see, if there were enough people that wanted to see that feature supported as well, it could add up.
Not only that, but one could get a visual idea of the support of the distro, and a representation of paying sponsors.