OpenIPO and Lindows

An anonymous reader writes "Lindows is using bankers WRHambrecht and their OpenIPO process when they go public. The lower end of the pricing range will net them more than 50MM. But OpenIPO is designed to let ANYONE bid on IPO shares. If Linux can keep investor's attention and Google announces their own IPO, they could raise much more which could have impact on desktop Linux. Same CEO had near perfect timing raising 300MM with MP3.com IPO." OpenIPO is the same route Andover.net took back in the day.

Comments

Lindows? I thought it was not Linspire

[Ra5pu7in]

Ahh, so the real reason they want to avoid a drawn-out battle with MS is revealed.

Surprised by Wealth! Then by Total Loss!

[sulli]

OpenIPO is the same route Andover.net took back in the day.

And we all know how well that worked out.

Re:Lindows? I thought it was not Linspire

[unformed]

they should set the name to Tofkal (The OS Formally Known As Lindows)

Hot Potato and Musical Chairs.

[tomblackwell]

It worked out for me. I bought and sold and exited with a tidy sum.

Broken Link

[xy]

The link to OpenIPO is broken. It should be:

http://www.openipo.com/

Re:Who is raising what 50 MM for? 300MM?

[LouCifer]

No, its MegaMillions. You know, the multi-state lotto?

My guess is they're going to go IPO and dump all the money into MegaMillions in order to thwart off SCO's attack.

Desktop Realitites

[deliciousmonster]

Mod me down if you must, but I hope that a majority of the IPO dollars are spent refining the GUI AND THE FUNCTIONALITY to be more similar to Windows.

The fact of the matter is that it will have to more closely mirror M$'s interface than you think to be accepted, perceived improvements included.

If Longhorn came out with an OSX-like GUI, it would work, but any other OS has to ingratiate itself slowly.

Not that 2008 for Longhorn isn't slow, but you get the point.

Re:Desktop Realitites

[nycsubway]

You have a point there. It's not only to mimick what people are used to, but Microsoft has spent years and millions of dollars doing research to find what GUI most people will accept.

A linux desktop should look like Windows not only because its what people are used to, but its what most people have proven to be able to use.

Re:Desktop Realitites

[Liselle]

No, I'd mod you up if I had points, because you're absolutely right (that's what you meant, though, isn't it?).

Even Microsoft faced a backlash when they screwed with the UI in Windows XP, despite the fact that it's more intuitive. After users finally got used to the setup in NT/95/98/ME/2K, everything got flipped on its head. Fortunately, they are smart, and left a classic view in.

For a Linux distro with a small userbase, trying to get Windows converts is an uphill battle if the UI looks different than Windows. Maybe not for you or I, but the technically inclined are a minority section of the Windows userbase. There is a lesson here, I think.

Re:Desktop Realitites

[happyfrogcow]

Mod me down if you must... [snip]

You hear him. Mods, get at it!

Seriously though, screw MS-Windows functionality. In Outlook it sometimes freezes for a minute if I make a quick mouse movement and click on a menu. It feels like it's pondering which button I really wanted to click on, almost as though the click event happened in two different widgets. And after a minute of what I can only believe is highly intelligent AI computations, it finally determines that I wanted to click on "View" instead of the printer icon.

Now the quality of the GUI is arguable. It's widely known, and while that's not all it has going for itself, I feel it's the bigest reason why people continue to use new iterations of MS products. If the computer illiterate has to do anything other than their repetitious task, they won't know what to do (i mean, the structure of menus within menus leading to dialog windows isn't obvious). But this mostly comes down to the fact that the typical users don't ever read the documentation or bother with the help system.

So what's my point... I guess that it is this. We do need a consistent Look and Feel in Linux, that is atleast superficially similar to other popular GUI's, but in functionality (average response time..etc) it should surpass those other GUI's. Arguably we have this already through "themes", though maybe not completely (GTK, QT, TK, Swing, etc all look different).

What I fear is that a lot of that IPO money will probably end up in marketting, causing Lindows to be the first Linux introduction to many people. I don't know a lot about Lindows but I doubt it is up to large scale scrutiny. A bad distro + MS-FUD could do some big damage to public perception of Linux.

Re:Who is raising what 50 MM for? 300MM?

[rebeka thomas]

MM is a standard postfix for "Million" of a relevant currency in financial circles.

Great opportunity to make $$$

[NineNine]

Short it! I mean, c'mon, this company is run by some juvenile jackass who thought that "Lindows" would be a great name, and actually started to try to defend it. That's the kind of stunt that some college kid could pull, not a CEO of a publicly traded company. I know that I'm waiting for it to peak (day 1), then I'm shorting the hell out of this. Lindows will be long gone within a year or two.

Motivation?

[nodwick]

Is being "better" enough to make OpenIPO popular?

I suspect a big reason people use the current IPO process is not because they feel it's the best process for raising the maximum revenue, but because it raises acceptable amounts of revenue while letting people connected to the IPO profit by purchasing underpriced shares at launch. For this reason IPO shares are usually handed out as perks to people connected with either the company itself or their financial firm.

Scamming people legally

[BuddieFox]

But OpenIPO is designed to let ANYONE bid on IPO shares.

Sounds to me like legal way to scam/cash in on hype and an overenthusiastic general public.

Benjamin Graham (Warren Buffets "idol") used to say that IPO stands for "It's Probably Overpriced".
Factor that in with an irrational and overenthusiastic general public lacking investment skills thinking all IPO:s are winners (they usually forget the last bubble in good times) and you have a table set for even more inflated IPO:s and ludicrous business models going public.

Oh, I get it! Buy tech stocks and get rich...

[turnstyle]

Why didn't anybody think of this before? ;)

"Same CEO had near perfect timing raising 300MM with MP3.com"

hmmm, what's the current value of MP3.com stock?

Re:Oh, I get it! Buy tech stocks and get rich...

[metallicagoaltender]

Oh, come on. MP3.com was sued into obscurity, it didn't fail because it was a bad idea.

So you're saying it wasn't a bad idea for them to follow a business model that was bound to piss off the major labels and get themselves sued into oblivion?

Lindows IPO

[doodlelogic]

It is interesting that this company's management was apparently involved in previous dud tech floats. This is the latest in a long series of floatations by companies that have not gone from the stage of having a good idea to the stage of making money from it. There is an unfortunate precedent for this company: just as users of mp3 sites wanted (at that stage) something for nothing, so linux users are generally still looking at the system as a cheaper, or free, alternative to those on the market. For Lindows to make a decent profit, it will either have to change the culture of its user base, or make serious inroads into the entrenched Windows market. Either will be a formidable task.

I seriously want to know!

[wo1verin3]

But can someone explain what the huge appeal with Lindows still is? All of the hype building up to the release had to do with it's ability to run Windows apps.

This functionality was never above or beyond any other Linux distribution... so it's just another distro now... right or wrong? What else does it offer besides the click and play?

Re:WTF Unit of currency is an MM?

[oldmildog]

technically, MM is " a thousand thousand"

Or 2000 if you're Roman.

50 millimeters!?!?

[vijaya_chandra]

50 millimeters of what?!!?

Why can't the editors be a little sympathetic to lamers like me in expanding acronyms!?!