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Red Hat & VA IPO Speculation by CNET

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-read dept.

diogenes write in to send us a CNet article that speculates wildly about the IPO Intentions of Linux Heavyweights Red Hat and VA Linux Systems. Red Hat denies it (as always) and VA Speculates (as always). Mentions Mandrake working at VA and wraps up with a bit about Cygnus. I wonder where Linuxcare fits into all this, but other than that, this a good summary of the picture right now.

2 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Well, you asked for it. by chrisd · · Score: 3
    Boy, I don't want to talk to much about this, as I have -no- clue as to what the SEC would see as illegal, so I'm not comforatble talking aobut actual shares and stuff. It's actually harder than just granting stock to developers because, in reality, where do we stop, I mean there are tens of thousands of them out there. So that is what we are wrestling with, how do we reqrd the commmunity while not alienating /insulting it with some bullsh*t token gesture. This is what I was hired to do (among other things)

    In the short term, we are trying to payback the community from whence we came in the following ways

    Hosting projects

    Hardware donations (debian/fsf/others)

    Outright hiring people to work on free projects (those that have somethign to do with va nad those that have little to do with VA)

    Joining organizations that we feel are important to OSS (li,x/open)

    Donating to FSF

    Running linux.com in a very community way

    Of course open sourcing whatever we do.

    Helping new proejcts get off the ground

    Helping out lugs (somethign near to my heart)

    Helping prominant developers with travel/hotel for tradeshows and such.

    But we are not really satisified with just this. I'd actually like to solicit help, if you have a good idea, email me at chris@valinux.com with your suggestion.

    Post IPO, look for us to

    Expand the above

    Endow open source chairs at universities.

    Offer Scholarships.

    Expand how we can help out in the lugs and such.

    Offering financial/hardware support to those projects that we have not been able to help yet.

    and more, hopefully.

    This is obviously only the beginning, so there you go. Email me :-)

    Chris DiBona
    VA Linux Systems


    --
    Grant Chair, Linux Int.
    VP, SVLUG

    --
    Co-Editor, Open Sources
    Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
  2. Do they need to? by Fizgig · · Score: 4

    Do they even need to go public? As much as I would like them to offer me a job and make me rich, do they even need to go public? They have people like Netscape/AOL and IBM investing in them. They can live off that pretty well and continue to grow. The only reasons they would need to go public (correct me if I'm wrong) would be to raise more capital, which they seem to have plenty of, or to have their stock go sky-high and then bail out. This is what tech companies tend to do, but why should they? If Linux really is the next-big-thing, they can just wait until it really takes off, and then both Red Hat and VA (as well as their long-time employees) should be raking in big dough on their own merit, not because of the overspeculation of a million tech-hyper investors. Am I wrong here? Why should they go public? They have more than enough momentum and private investment that they can survive quite well until they hit the big time. True, they could become a billion-dollar company overnight if they went public, but they wouldn't own as much of that company any more. Why not wait a few years and try to become the billion-dollar company on their own merit?