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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 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
umm, if you love a company, and you want it to continue on its merry way, you want to funnel as much resources into it as you can... Stocks are a way to do that.
you aren't doing it b/c you think it is neat, you are doing it to give them more money.
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,
I think that's kinda the point - Mandrake users want to make sure it stays around so they buy stock in the company to make sure it has the working capital to do so.
Or you can look at it a different way - investors buy stocks because they expect a return .... it's just that traditionaly the return is money .... in this case it might be money, if they are wildly successfull, or it might be in some more intangable (and untaxable!) form like free access to cooler software in the future (ie a better distro) etc etc. In general I think a lot of the really cool stuf about open source has happened because of the growth of this largely non-money "hacker-gift-culture" sort of economy
Maybe that's why the economy is in the toilet: not enough fun...
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.
A core dump is just a simplified blue screen of death You should change you sig... because you are wrong... core dump in unix is what a dr watson (or general protection fault) is in win32 a kernel panic in unix is what a blue screen of death is in win32 Please get your facts staight... I would rather have a core dump than a BSOD any day because core dump leaves the kernel in a stable state, but kills the processes... a kernel panic on the other hand... ouch those hurt big time.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
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
There's a more important question than who would the buyers be. That is, Who would the underwriter be? From a business standpoint, there must be an underwriter that handles the transaction to the extent that Mandrake gets it's money in one lump sum and can then use it to continue to build it's business. Bringing in a couple dollars here and a couple dollars there wouldn't do it.
The underwriter would have to be reasonably confident in the company to begin with, to essentially the same if not a greater extent than the market as a whole. I suppose their could be an alternative underwriting agreement, similar to what you see in boilerroom trading outfits, although that would put a major stigma on the company, above and beyond that currently attached to the word 'linux'. It's a tough sell any way you cut it, but there are certainly enough new outlets to make IPOs available to the public at large. Well, good luck to them.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
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.
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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.