Slashdot Mirror
Red Hat IPO Surprise
An anonymous told us that they recieved a little
surprise in their inbox from Red Hat today: The NC boys
have reserved a chunk of shares to be purchased on E*Trade by
contributors to the open source comunity before the
masses get their chance to super inflate them. Very cool
on RHs part (even tho I didn't seem to make the cut *sniffle* :)
This is not different from the sort of offer many corporations give their board of directors, except the directors have a chance to purchase larger amounts.
This is not costing Red Hat much to do - they are selling you the stock at the same price they'd be selling it to the institutions who generally get in to IPOs. However, they are taking a public-relations risk, and that takes guts.
The only problem here is that you need money to get in the game. Some of the people who were chosen won't be able to play because of that.
Red Hat employees and a few special people are most likely being given "options", which means they can purchase the stock at a fixed price (which can range from pennies per share to the initial offering price) for a number of years. I've been there with Pixar. Options are a much better deal because you don't have to buy until you know you'll make a profit, but it costs RH much more to offer options because the artificially low price of the options dilutes the market value of their stock.
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.
My objection is not to the message -- I think it's a great idea! The objection is to the delivery. This is just the sort of thing that spammers need to legitimize their actions, and shouldn't be used. I am glad to see them offering the community these options; I am just not glad to see them doing so in this way.
- Overly juvenile.
Not possible.- By your definition, the junk I get offering me cheap RS/6000 hardware is perfectly justified because I've made a couple of posts to comp.unix.aix.
I think you'd have to be pretty stupid (even more stupid than you) to think that everyone who posts to comp.unix.aix is even remotely interested in actually buying RS/6000's. Most people can't afford them, even discounted.Now, I know what you're going to say (after "duh") you are going to say that you need to indicate your interest in email in some public way before you should get it. Well, at least 75% of the email I get is unsolicited in this way. It is sent directly to me by people who think that I want to get it or should get it for some reason. Sometimes they're wrong, but I don't make a big fuss over it. Take a valium, people.
- I don't care how carefully they've chosen the addresses
..., the people mailed were not asked if they wanted to be mailed beforehand.
This raises an interesting question. How could they have asked? By sending email? Wouldn't that have been SPAM? I guess that could have telephoned everybody. Now that would be so much less annoying. The truth is, these people attached their email addresses to Open Source projects so that people could contact them with respect to their work. This mailing was in regards to their work, although not directly.- Due to the way university education is funded...I'll be one of the people paying for [Spam].
Y'know, telecommunications tarriffing in Europe is, put simply, TOTALLY FUCKED. It's really a subject for totally different thread, but stop whining. You have a lousy cost structure for data communication. We have an overabundance of uncontrolled firearms. Count your fuckin' blessings.It appears everyone is 3060. I'm hoping to invest up to $50,000 :) :) :).
This is my first investment (I'm 14). My dad has offered to loan me $50,000 to invest if he likes RedHat's prospectus. Whoopee!!
I am a Debian developer. I posted the RedHat mail. That action had nothing to do with the way Debian as a whole feels or believes. I am an individual and I posted the mail on my own, and not on the behalf of Debian.
I do think many of us do feel violated by a company that we thought held the same values as us. But they do this and make themselves no better than cyber-promo (you gotta remember these dorks). Spam is spam, no matter how you look at it. We did not ask for it. Many of us got hit on our @debian.org addresses, not our own home addy. I PERSONALLY think RedHat is demonstrating it's MS'ishness. Again, these comments are MINE, not Debian. I'm just to lazy to make my own l/p.
Thanks,
Erick Kinnee
ekinnee1@airmail.net
Regarding point 4, I have said before that I am glad they are making this offer. I simply object to the delivery (spam), and thus by extension, the possible ways the list for spamming may have been made.
Regarding point 5, it was an honest question, I have no idea what the correct answer is.
Regarding point 6, certainly it is nice to be given the chance. It is a nice offer. I object to the delivery.
Jesus GUYS BUY THE STOCK. Inside word is that Redhat should triple in value on opening day.I would love to buy some Redhat stock but I am not a developer but the lonely CEO of a open source e-commerce company. If you got "a spam" take advantage of it. It's not often that you get the chance to safely triple your money.
Thalasar
You're letting rationality replace intelligence.
Spam is not high crime.
Redhat is trying to let these developers have a piece of what RedHat itself will make from the IPO. How else are they reasonably going to get the word out on fairly short notice? By targeting lists directly, they are much more likely to get the word to people who are busy coding, not web surfing.
I can't believe people are going off sideways about this; it's just A PIECE of email, and probably the only unsolicited email Redhat will ever send. In really unusual circumstances, some rules don't apply. Telling people you're giving them a piece of your multi-million IPO is one of them.
The good in this case so far outweighs the minor annoyance that any frothing about it merely makes you look stupid.
Don't let rationality replace simple sense. Use your brain, don't let it use you.
-- Ron
I have to ask: Are you including (in your 1 success in 10 attempts) IPOs available generally or just those you were invited into? I've had very good luck getting into the latter.
Do I have big $$? I dunno, define big. I certainly don't think so, and I certainly don't expect that I'm a preferred E*Trade customer...
I'm a nature photographer.
- He's just commenting on the unfairness of a system that rewards johnny-come-latelies...
That's sorta reasonable, except this isn't "the system." This is a welcome deviation from the system.The system rewards the drinking buddies of the founders. Y'know, the guy who makes it the IPO as "Director of Nothing in Particular" and disappears after the first round when the auditors figure out he's just an oxygen thief.
A lot of companies end up with this guy -- the "Pete Best" of the corporate world. Maybe he joined the company in the beginning before people knew how useless he'd be. Maybe he invested a few thousand back when everybody was maxed-out on their credit cards. Whatever the case, he ends up a millionaire for no particular reason.
This is different. It's a a flawed attempt to reward people who deserve it but wouldn't necessarily get squat. I can't believe all the bitching it's caused.
Yes, once again, the net has failed to meet even my low expectations of human discourse.
I would have said nothing, or been positive about this, if some of the Debian officials would have made a mail to debian-privat about this. Anyone interested would have reported his interest on more details in a mail to a given RH address.
I think the idea is that Redhat choose who *they* are interested in based on the person's contribution to the open source community, rather than the other way around. Because contrary to what you seem to think, *a lot* of people will be very interested in such an offer; there's no need for Redhat to resort to this just to sell their shares.
Come on. This is ridiciulous.
Why? is it ridiculous? Because you think Redhat will have trouble selling its shares, and is thus resorting to this as some sort of lame marketing gag? You're being ridiculous.
You sound like someone who's sore about being left out of a good deal.
Now we have proof! They're trying to get Debian devotees to invest in RedHat, making it against their interest to continue developing for Debian, their competition! Does it get more Microsoftian than that???
BTW... I'm ***JUST KIDDING*** Red Hat is a great company.
__farCe__, goddamnit, FAR-->C--E!
The problem with them emailling addresses such as @debian.org is that there is over 300 developers and we are all spread around the world. A lot of those emails went to people that couldn't even use the offer.
That's the problem with bulk emails or spam; you often miss your target market and get a whole lot of other people, like me.
I appreaciate the intention, I'm just not sure it was the right way to do it.
Have it ever stuck to you that is another email scum (like the one yesterday in the name of Linus)?
Is it that hard to figure it out?
You do not need to be US citizen to open an E-Trade account. In fact it is better if you are not, since you are not liable for any federal US income tax on any profits. (They will ask you to fill out a W-8 or 1001)
Don't forget the other restriction imposed in this, it's available only to residents of some backwards country nobody cares about.
Not that I was interested in shares in Microsoft Linux anyway...
Matt
Did anyone get one who did not submit a bug
report to red hat?
I've done and am doing lots. No redhat mail. Oh well. Only about 300 copies of The Linux Router Project go out a day now. Ho hum. Guess that ain't much. : >
Well I'm interested if anyone else isn't dcinege@linuxrouter.org
Massmailing on every address you get hold of is spamming.
They didn't even care, if you can use this. You do know that this is only valid for US residents?
It is like this absolutly bargain and great offer to refill your printer by company xyz located in L.A.
Well, RedHat's abuse account bounces. Looks like there have even one point more in common.
Martin Bialasinski
If you weren't invited but you are an opensource
Linux developer, what do you do?
Thanks.
P.S. If anybody got invited and dont want to use
this opportunity please email me their userid and
passwd at happy_programmer@yahoo.com pleeese!
That's not correct unless Red Hat selectively grepped for a name and sent email to every address it matched. I got the offer at both my home email address, where I submit most of my code from, and at work. The only connection between the two (beside the name) is that I purchased a Red Hat product using each address.
...what about Slashdot readers, and Red Hat Linux users? What are we, chopped liver? Do we get a crack at the IPO too?
Come on, I didn't open this E*TRADE account for my health.
For more information, click here.
> First, it's not spam--If you were sent a username and password for an online trading account worth a million bucks unsolicited in the e-mail (with a reason and your name attached) would you turn it down?
It's just as much spam as the other junk I get - it's unsolicited, it's commercial and it's e-mail.
The fact that it contains some account information is irrelevant - porn sites sometimes do this, and they at least would allow me to use their services (the offer is open only to US residents, which I am not).
Just to say that in my experience people who see twisted things everywhere are twisted themselves.
If RedHat hadn't something like this, YOU would have criticized it, now that it does something like this for the community, YOU criticize it again!
Just say you hate RedHat in one big fat message and don't post any more stupid comments like this one.
Kill Microsoft? No! Just hire their GUI guys!
Where can I pick 'em up? :)
Have contributed a bit here and there. I'm not on [The] list, however would absolutely be interested.
sernst@gfsimis.com
Good grief. Spam is sending bulk E-mail to people who don't give a flying crap about what you have to sell or say.
Red Hat's mail was targetted to people who have actually contributed the THEIR OWN success. This is a big thank you to the open source community from Red Hat, and they are VERY cool for doing it!
Just wish I got one (but then, my contributions aren't particularly big)...
Anyone know what's up with etrade's customer profile that they use to determine if you are allowed to participate in the IPO? They claim it's required by the SEC, but reading through the questions it looks like you have to be a fat bastard (in the monetary sense) to buy IPO shares. Things like how long have you been trading, what markets, etc.
This seems pretty weird to me. John R. American can blow $2k on tequila w/o government approval, but they can't buy $2k of stock?
This is non-transferable. You can't use someone else's offer.
...an open source contributor?
-
BlackNova Traders
Yes, spam is any unsolicited mass commercial emailing. This fits that definition. Whether you happen to see it as a positive spam does not make any difference to the hundreds of people who received it and did not wish to receive it. To them it's just another piece of spam, and you'll see that at least some of them are not very happy about it if you read the rest of the comments here.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
A few days ago everyone was being real paranoid about how Redhat would now have to answer to its stockholders. "What if Microsoft buys a stake?!" came the bellows. So what does Redhat do? They dump a ton of shares back into the Linux/OSS community. Everyone has focused on how this is free money if you sell out early, but it also gives you partial control of Redhat if you stay. So now Microsoft might own a piece, but so will Debian. And we all know the kind of amoral money-grubbers Debian attracts...
But this is wrong too? So y'all don't want he money coming from outside, because that biases RHAT away from the community, but it can't from inside either, because that biases the community towards RHAT. So where can the money come from? Is there anything Red Hat can do that isn't sinister and underhanded?
Well friend, I've been a Linux user/developer since '94, and I figure that I deserve something for all the Linux newbies I've gotten started. :-) Kindly forward RedHat's email to me at gjacobson@mdcme.org... I promise I'll put it to good use.
I got one of these offers as well, but unfortunately it's for US Residents only...
How is this any different? If you really think you have a good chance of making tons of easy money through Red Hat's IPO, you need to learn more about the stock market.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I don't know about you, but I, as a 'open source'(ick, I hate that name) developer do NOT have the kind of money to throw around that one needs to open an account with etrade.
....
Btw, they mailed MOST @debian.org addresses. I know of one person who did NOT get an email, because he doesn't maintain any packages. However, he wrote apt, so,
I got one of the emails and appreciated. The next day I setup an etrade account and FedEx'd a $1500 check. My colleague who also got an email did the same.
Today I called etrade because their "Indicate Interest" pages don't work and did the eligibility form with a human. I failed... don't know what you have to pass this thing. I have a household income over $75k, 2+ years in stocks/mutual funds, and experience with electronic trading and full service. Coming up with the $1500 cash I was making available for 100 shares was no big deal.
Oh well... looks like RedHat's choice of etrade was bad for us. I'll take etrade's $75 bonus for opening the account and close it.
Sorry to say this guys but such a "special arrangement" also violates about a half dozen SEC rules. There's already been one bust for this type of stuff elsewhere.
Discredited but still feisty
Jack Bryar
We contribute a great deal to the Open Source community by offering free hosting to anyone who wants it. We host hundreds of Open Source projects and we also advertise our use of RedHat for our servers on our site and we got skipped, too. Sadly, we do have some money to invest, would anyone care to allow us to "piggy back" and contribute some cash to their pool? Heck, we sure could use some extra money to aid our efforts here! Thanks a million!
--Chris
chris@linuxbox.com
I got a copy of this, and reacted pretty badly (since SPAM really pisses me off), but I've calmed down now.
In my case this is definitely SPAM, since it's a get rich quick scheme that I'm not eligible for (I live in the UK). I'd still consider it to be SPAM even if I was eligible.
I'd imagine that some pointy-haired genius at RedHat thought that a mass mailing to a randomly trawled list of contributors would be a great idea.
It reminds me of the one where Dilbert sarcastically suggests that they mass mail all their customers, and the PHB says "Do it''
What they should have done, is publish a page, saying "e-mail us with a justification of your claim to be a open source (sic) contributor, and we'll send you a password.''.
I presume they didn't want to do that, because it would have caused them work, whereas they're perfectly happy to waste thousands of other people's time, and in many cases money downloading some crappy email that doesn't apply to them.
OK, so in conclusion we have the following facts:
-- dubious research compiling the list of victims
-- disregard of other people's time/data costs, in order to save themselves effort
-- responding to the email is likely to make money for the sender
Looks like SPAM to me.
P.S. I've go no axe to grind against RedHat in general, but IMO they don't get a license to spam no matter how generally wonderful they are.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
Having never used ETrade before, I figured registration would be a simple matter of filling out an online form and wiring over some money and bam, account. -WRong-. You have to print and sign the application, mail it in and wait 3 to 5 days for it to be activated.
:)
Let's do the math: Email received Tues. July 20th @ 5pm. Deadline, Wed. July 8th. Six business days.
One day to FedEx the application, up to five days to get the account registered. In a worst-case scenario you can barely make it (this assumes you happen to have $1000 lying around.) Of course, I didn't investigate opening an ETrade account until this weekend (that's my own damned fault) and realized I didn't have enough time to set up the account before the July 28th deadline.
So, between cursing, kicking and screaming at RedHat and ETrade I happened to look at ETrade's RedHat IPO page again... the deadline has been extended to Aug 4th! YAY! Anyone that was in my boat now has a second chance, go for it!
PS Of course, now I have to take back all the nasty things I said about RedHat.
I started an Etrade account with 5,000
Account went active last night.
Today Etrade informs me after I answer their 'profile' questions that I cannot participate.
Here is a summary of the answers I gave that hopefully someone else can use to get a better chance of Etrade accepting them:
Income: 40k
Total Liquidity: 10K
Current investments: 3k
Market Knowledge: Limited
Investment Goal: Growth
maybe 'capital holding' is a better answer here
The etrade broker also asked what the e-mail address was that I received the invitation from redhat at.(IOW non-transferability check)
Now I have to wait 2 weeks before they will let me get my money back. Sounds like a great deal for Etrade to me.
--
As an active member of the open source community I can't accept
spamming. And by sending the attached message to members of the open
source community Red Hat has spammed the community.
By sending this spam Red Hat has lost a lot of points in my score
book. I have never used Red Hat and after this spam I'm sure I never
will. I can't support companies spamming potentiel users.
Please make sure that I'm removed from any spamlist inside RedHat and
make sure that I'm not going to enter one again.
Yet Another Debian User
too bad their offer is limited to 'US residents only', I'd probably been interested otherwise.
hey if you can't use it, i'll pay for it....reply at dubonic@ivillage.com
Wow, is this true about the SEC code? I have several friends at MP3.COM who've helped me get in on the IPO. Gosh, I hope I won't get in trouble... oh well. :-)
//joke mode on
did you see the movie the prophecy??
//joke mode off
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
I'm 3060 too..never posted to bugzilla but I've put stuff in freshmeat and on sunsite. *shrug*
They're probably going from multiple sources.
Since Linus is not a US citizen,
he's not allowed to buy RedHat shares.
... seems pretty strange to me.
--
Raphael Wegmann
Raphael Wegmann
wegmann@psi.co.at
Oh, this is exactly the thing the mail is about.
Hi, we sell music CDs, by using this account on foo.com, you get our CDs for a special introductory prize.
Hi, we make Read Hat Linux, by using this account on ebay, you get our stocks for a special introductory prize.
Then send it to people in Japan and say it is only relevant for US residents.
How are they supposed to know they've a Nip address, anyway?
No luck for non-US residents like me:
In appreciation of your contribution to the open source community, Red Hat is pleased to offer you this personal, non-transferable, opportunity.
Well golly gee. Up until RedHat announced the IPO all we heard was that distributors skimmed off the hard work of others. With the IPO we heard that RedHat had confirmed their "grab money and run" intentions.
..."
Now RedHat is attempting to allow developers access to their stock - before the big players grab it up and raise the price.
Nowhere in this has RedHat done anything to say that other distributions can't do the same. They haven't patented the IPO method of giving back to the free s/w community.
Debian is free to offer cash or stock back to free software developers. So are Caldera, SUSE, Corel, etc.
RedHat is the first distribution to attempt to give money back to as many developers as it fiscally and legally can. Being first they'll obviously make a few missteps.
Now when Linus first released Linux to the net, which would have encouraged him?
"You fucking moron! Don't initialise a console like that. Get a fucking clue, and quit spamming the *MINIX* newsgroup."
or
"Linus, your console init routine has some goofs. Here's a patch that fixes some of them. You might also want to check in this paper at the following ftp site (user anonymous, password your email address)
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
They didn't filter out non-US email address, you complete and total moron.
I don't know how they created their list either. I'm both an FSF volunteer and Debian volunteer, but they sent to jonas@coyote.org, which is my mostly personal address. Ah well.
In a psychology class I took a few years ago, we were told about an experiment on rationalization. Two groups of people spent huge amounts of time picking up paper clips off of the ground, one at a time. One group was paid well for their task, while the other group was paid very poorly. At the end, both groups were interviewed and the poorly paid folks were much happier with their work. According to the Prof, they subconciously figured to themselves, "hey, here I am doing all this work for no reward, so to maintain my mental self respect, I'll imagine it's satisfying."
I distinctly remember trying to decide how to spend a certain block of time last year. It was either enter the RedHat screensaver contest or put together mail-archive.com and help out the communications infrastructure for a whole bunch of software projects. Which I feel pretty good about (how can one feel bad about supporting xmame?) Anyway, I think I've just about convinced myself that I made the right choice by not working on those lucrative screensavers.
Jeff
It doesn't seem to be anything real selective from RH here. I got one and haven't done a lick in the way of open source contributions except using some of it. The only thing RH knows about me is that I'm on their RH Announce List. I bet you a dollar to a donut everyone that has 3060 as their number is on that list too, just like me. I think RH just grabbed a few lists and went with it. Don't think about it too hard.
Commander
Then send you user name/pass to me! I will use it.
I am VERY EAGER to get in on this IPO. I opened an account at ETrade just for this IPO.
I've been using RedHat for awhile (though I use Mandrake in my main machine right now) and I think this IPO is gonna go thru the roof!
-geekd
geekd@yahoo.com
I'll be so angry, there's no way I'll buy more than 500 shares.
But seriously, folks, RedHat is walking a very thin line here. I suspect would take the position that if you wrote code that ended up in RedHat, that would constitute a prior relationship. That's not a completely unreasonable position, either. Then again, there are a lot of anti-spam people out there are ARE completely unreasonable. I'm sure spammers love them, too, because they make tend to make all anti-spammer look stupid.
I just hope it's not something real stupid like those X10 spams I keep getting. Dammit, if I get something that reads like a porno spam, there damn well better be some naked chicks on their site!
This message has been scanned for memes and dangerous content by MindScanner, and is believed to be unclean.
Go to the bank, to a friend, to your folks and borrow the necessary cash. At the end of the day/week, sell off enough shares to pay back the loan.
Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?
What is your Slash Rating?
What are the SEC issues? If your an Executive on a NasDaq company you can certainly get in on an IPO, doesn't matter what country you are from. Is there different rules for "friends" of the company?
I am looking at the Etrade application. All that stops someone from outside the US, is a SIN#, so how do I go about getting one of those?
You'll find my name on each and every RH CD since 5.1. (Plus RH is what I've
:-).
been using exclusively.)
I didn't receive the offer!
Maybe its time for me to consider a different distro
I'm curious what it answers. Since they openly said that they may have sent it to multiple email addresses, how do they know what person is associated with which email address? Is the offer keyed in some way to the email address?
not to be a sore looser... but i have made several open source contributions and wasnt sent an email.. oh well.. and i just opened up an etrade account too... luck of the draw i guess...
no riches for me just yet....
John
http://notanumber.net/
I'd swear that /. could find evil in the Angel Gabriel. Don't you guys ever look favorably on anything at all?
You are wrong. It is perfectly legal to add
someone to the "friends and family" list for an
IPO.
First of all, congrats to all of the people who got the investment letter - from what I know, this is a damn good opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a company that may do extremely well.
Second, to all of those who are naysaying this offer and saying 'RedHat is EVIL', I say get a life. Making money is not evil - and from what I've seen so far, you are hallucinating that RedHat even has a hope of a prayer in becoming the 'next microsoft' in terms of tactics.
So that out of the way, I'd like to make *my* following offer. If you got the letter and can't invest (for monetary reasons, or whatever) I'd love to 'stake' you in some way (such that the risk is all mine, and I would get a share of any potential profits). And I've got some fairly significant money I'd be willing to risk on this IPO in such a manner. I'm THAT sure that this IPO will be a blow out.
Anyways, I'm not sure about exactly how kosher this would be (legal wise and such), so I guess I'm going to be making some phone calls tomorrow.
And I think it would be really cool if a pool of money could be made in this way in the linux community - but I guess that would be something for Bob Young and RedHat to allow.
Ed
(
PS: thanks to redhat - you took the this 'allowing developers to invest in the IPO' idea right out of my mouth. I appreciate how redhat helps linux - and appreciate the risks of the business that you are in after reading your business plan in preparation for this IPO. Best of luck.
)
This /. stupidity is why the Kernel mailing list often disparages slashdotters.
Since when has turning down money been part of the Linux tradition? Linus is happy to make money from Linux, and so should anyone else with at least half a brain. Hell, even RMS isn't anti-money.
Most slashdotters wouldn't recognise spam if they were served a spam sandwich,
RMS is not anti-money so long has he's the one who's getting it, not somebody else.
The big benefit is that they get all this free publicity. Whether
or not any "open source developer" decides to invest is
a lot less important that the actual press. As they say,
"bad press is better than no press at all".
I'd *love* to get a few shares of RHAT early. I like their company, and believe in the product. (well, maybe not 6.0, but... never use the first release of anything on a production machine until you're sure it's stable :)
However, for you doubters crying "Foul!" and "SPAM!", remember that Mark Twain had an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a little venture run by his friend Alexander Graham Bell, and... he turned it down because he'd gotten burned one too many times by bad investments.
So when I get my shares of RHAT too late, or don't hold onto them, I might be feeling pretty stupid...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
GS only has to buy it if it is a secure underwriting. Most IPOs contracts are structured as a
"best efforts" underwriting, where all GS has to do is offer the shares and if they don't make
their subscription, they're not on the hook to buy all the shares...
In a secure underwriting, the underwriter buys all the shares and then sells them. In a "best efforts"
underwriting, the underwriter only buys the shares that they have orders for (although partners can
put in their own orders so this is ususally not a problem)...
However, I have no doubt that RH will be over subscribed 10-20x and they will have no trouble
selling any shares they offer (including over-allotment shares) regardless if it's a "best efforts"
or a secure underwriting.
FYI, the reserve or directed shares are a great deal since IPO shares are subject to allotment.
The IPO shares are sold by allotment to brokers which depends on how many they ask for.
For a hot IPO like RH, it'll be way oversubscribed so a broker will ask for say 10mil shares and
only get say 1mil which the broker is free to divy-up however they want (usually to their best
customers first, or just by percentage like I bid for 1000 and get to buy 100). The only rule is that
they have to be spread out between small and large buyers in a fair fashion (so if you put in a small
order, you could get lucky, or nothing).
With directed shares, the pool is separated from the riff-raff and most people can get what they
bid for.
BTW: all the IPO shares are sold to every one at the exact same price (nobody gets special price
treatment). You either get to buy them or not. If not, you have to wait for them to be traded.
That's why everyone wants the IPO shares. But after they are in the market, orders sit around,
until they are filled, and if you put in a market price bid, you may end up paying a lot of money...
Yes, but there is more to it than that. When a company sells stock anyone can buy it. Read another way, people who don't necessarily care about (or even agree with) the principles of free software can buy stock. And stockholders have some pretty hefty influences on a company - after all, they own it. By reserving some stock for people they think are part of the linux community, RedHat limits their risk of stockholder influence that would be considered 'evil' by the community. They even get PR points in the process - and it doesn't really cost them anything.
Having said that, not everybody they offer a slice to will get all that they want. They have a fixed number of shares that will be randomly assigned in blocks of 100 shares if demand exceeds supply.
-- ncb
what exactly is an US-resident? Is living and working there 'at the moment' enough to qualify? BTW, I have a linux on laptop support page, which might be the reason, why I was selected. Well, I take it as a compliment.
My only question is where did they get my e-mail address. If anyone knows how they compiled this list, I'd be very appreciative. It was sent to my main personal address, not any of my tagged addresses. I appreciate the offer, and if it weren't for an employment agreement which forbids me from purchasing securities from anyone other than my employer, I'd have my money over in e-trade faster than you can say 'redhat is evil'.
I'd just like to know how they determined that I had made "a contribution to the open source community".
Thanks for the generous offer, RedHat. That's one IPO that I'd LOVE to be in.
And I quote: "In appreciation of your contribution to the open source community, Red Hat is pleased to offer you this personal, non-transferable, opportunity."
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Not to be rude, but I'm wondering about those of you who are complaining about this being spam...
a) did not receive the e-mail?
b) do you currently invest in securities?
c) do you have the budget to participate?
d) do you trust on-line commerce enough to put money into e*trade?
e) are you unable to participate due to other restrictions? (location, contractual agreements, etc.)
Now here's to hoping this gets moderated to a place that people respond....
- I guess I'll just have to produce my own [better] distribution
... (not particularly hard).
Please, please, produce a distro better than RedHat. Don't use any crappy RedHat code like their easy installer or RPM. In fact, I'll sit here and hold my breath until you do.[turns blue]
PHEEEEW... hurry up! I can't hold my breath that long! Ok... here I go again!
sure. tcpierce@bellatlantic.net
(Me too) :)
trog@wincom.net
Look at yourselves, you greedy little dwarfs. Gone are the ideals of free speech, coding for love and Linus, and making the world a better place. Now you can't get in line fast enough for the biggest Get-rich-quick scheme ever to hit the Linux community. I spit in your general direction.
I'm glad I've never been a RH user.
I think that this is called "directed shares" and E*Trade has a mailbox and a phone number set up specifically for this ("directed shares" in general, not Red Hat specifically.)
:)
Now, I don't know if directed shares are a different pool set aside for "friends and family" or if it just means "hey, we targeted you with an email and we hope you buy some." In other words, I don't know if people who got this offer have any better chance of participating in the IPO.
I seriously doubt that this is an SEC violation - surely E*Trade and Red Hat's lawyers would have stopped it otherwise.
YMMV, IANAI (I am not an investor)... Well, not much of one anyway.
My email address is hiding somewhere deep within the credits file of an obscure utility included with most distributions. At first I thought that was the reason I got the email. But then I noticed that the destination address is one of the throwaway aliases I use to reduce spam. I traced it back to a bug report I filed at redhat.
I find that insulting...
E*Trade is going to be getting thousands of new customers, each will deposit at least $1000. None of them are assured to actually get shares.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Why is this good? Open source contributors who previously had no particular loyalty to a specific distribution now have a reason to favor Red Hat (assuming they buy into the IPO).
What will the community think when Mr. Renowned Developer publicly says, "Personally, my favorite distro is Red Hat"? In the back of our minds will be, "Hmmm...I wonder if he was allowed in on the IPO"
I only remember being invited into one (one of the portal companies that I had an account on), and no, I didn't get into that one either.
:-) in your account.
:-)
FWIW, I wasn't 1 for ~10, my friend was. I'm O for ~10. I finally gave up trying.
I'm guessing that Preferred Customer status on E*Trade means at least 6 figures (to the left of the decimal point
I'm also guessing that they wouldn't tell me what that means even if I asked.
Anyway, I did sign up for one block (100 shares) just in case being invited actually means something this time. I didn't sign up for more because (1) I don't think it matters, and (2) I didn't want to be forced to have that much cash on hand at that time (i.e. either by selling stock I currently have or depositing more cash).
I read somewhere where the IPO share price they're currently shooting for is $12, but I know that will go up just before the day of reckoning.
-- Craig Miller Austin, TX
I've yet to be a contributor to open source, unless buying RH distros counts (which it really shouldn't), but I have registered my RH5.2 installation and have also registered to access RH's bug tracking system (bugzilla?).
I received two notes from them about this: one to each of my primary email addrs (work and ISP), but don't remember which I used to register what.
-- Craig Miller Austin, TX
I wonder how Red Hat created their list... it says "Dear open source community member", and I haven't really contributed to Open Source just yet (that's changing in the next month, however)... hmmm...
You haven't been giving out emails, have you Rob?
:-)
amit
It does not "cost" per se; rather, you have to deposit at least $1000 in your account there.
(Which makes sense... why would anyone want a brokerage account with no money in it?)
None of that amount is a fee, it is money in an account. You can close your account next week and get your $1000 back.
I don't know how they define who is allowed in, but if I were offered Redhat IPO shares at the IPO price, I would buy some.
I'm in the kernel CREDITS list _and_ I've filed bug reports at Red Hat with my email address, and I haven't received the email. So you can put that theory to rest.
Not that it would help as I'm not in the US.
I am surprised that a company trying to do good
and pass on benifits to the developer community is being held responsible from spam. Cmon guys dont be so paranoid. There is a human side to Redhat.
I don't object to the offer, but more so to being spammed about it. I should have thought that they would have been more responsible about it. They must be mining e-mail addresses of their competitors or something....
Ditto. I could put that money to good use, as I'am currently running linux on an old pentium, and since I am under 16, I should save for a car/college. Mail any offers to mattlesko@yahoo.com
So if someone who thinks you deserve reward for your work sends you email you bitch.
Tell me, do you also flame people who invite you to parties on nights you are busy ?
The offer is non transferable per the email.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
there is no sucker offer here.. red hat has no control over the market price after its shares have been *initially* sold..
and if this bitch sinks, you can cut off my balls and tape them to your wall..
When I first got mine, I thought "whoa, who do I know that might have added me to the list?" Then as it dawned on me that the chances of that happening were slim, I started thinking "hmm, was this sent to anyone else?"
As this Slashdot story shows, it WAS, and in spades. These DeadRat guys must think they are living in a world where people can't communicate to find odd coincidences and figure it out.
Obviously this was not a small mailing to an elite group. It was a turd that landed in my mailbox, and they can bite me.
"You may have already won..." type letters take on a whole new meaning when you find out that everyone else in town got one saying the same thing. That's exactly what happened here.
if you want, you can partner with someone (ME) and go in on it now. If one person has the invite, and the other has the capital, i don't see what's wrong with it. if interested, email me at punkigor@usa.net
I used to be with it Then they changed what it was Now what I'm with isn't it and what's it seems weird and scary to
Last time I got offered this it was with 3 hours warning and I passed - the stock went to 100 - I coulda taken a year off and just written open-source stuff :-(
They're using some mailing list to generate this, I hope it's from the maintainers of all the stuff in their distributions, this would not only be cool but somewhat appropriate
Where do you download it? I want a copy!
Wrong. US Resident is enough. I know of plenty
of people that are on F-1 or H1-B visas that
invest in stocks and mutual funds.
KV
I just want to make sure that no one out there thinks that an IPO is quick cash in the pocket. If Redhat's stock does well, then the chance to get in on the IPO is a gift. If Redhat goes bankrupt, then it's a curse. Just my two cents...
-- Ryan
Bwahahahaha! If I had any moderator points, I'd use one here. This cracked me up.
:-)
Though I pity the poor E*Trade folks getting requests for shares with the quantity set to "JarJar sucks".
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
It means you get to buy them if you wish at the initial price, before the market takes them up (or down). You get in before the masses.
if anyone has an invite that they can't or won't use (for lack of citizenship, or $$$), and wants to "team up", let me know. i'd be willing to provide a little capital to someone who wants in, but can't afford it. email me at punkigor@usa.net
--
I used to be with it Then they changed what it was Now what I'm with isn't it and what's it seems weird and scary to
Yeah, I'd hate to get mail like that.
Nope, he's just looking for a rental tomcat to do stud service.
His queen is in heat.
E*Trade does have a "get out of jail free" card, but it is to protect them, not you.
In order to participate in an IPO, you have to fill out a rather lengthy form about your income, your net worth, and your investment experience. And then (more on topic) you have to disclose if you or any family members are employed by a brokerage, or involved in securities at a bank, or are one of the company founders, blah, blah, blah.
This form determines your eligibility to participate in an IPO -- and if you lied, it will be your problem not theirs. Especially if you have a net worth of about $0 and you use a $2000 cash advance off a credit card to buy stock...
According to you. Spam is unsolicited *advertising*, by my definition.
My definition is based on what Usenet cancellers use. There, content is never part of the question. All that matters is the BI of the posting in question (ie the amount of multiposting and crossposting).
I just sent a mail to 10 people I know at university, and I didn't ask them first.
People expect to get mail from people they know personally. That would make your mail solicited, depending on what the mail was all about. (No, content still does not enter the definition. We usually just accept only certain kinds of mail as accepted behaviour from acquaintances.)
This also applies to the mail to Slashdot posters you mentioned. One expects to get comments on one's public words.
If I were to suck a list of Linux kernel developers and mail them all saying `here, have a free Quad PII Xeon box, to help with your development work', would that be spam?
If you mail them all the same form letter, then yes, you'd be spamming.
Allaire did the same thing for their developer base on Cold Fusion. I didn't hear anyone btch bout that.
Personally, I am very very happy. This is going to be my first investment, and hopefully if there are enough developers such as myself - it could be a good thing as far as being a part of just _one_ commercial aspect to Linux.
pana
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
I received it but I'm not a US citizen
;-)
too bad...
Uncle Sam still giving you one hand while keeping the other securing the wallet
- But most people can afford to invest (reasonably heavily) in Redhat's shares, I suppose?
At an anticipated opening price of US$6 a share, I'd say yes. There is plenty of real poverty in the US, but we are talking about people who can afford computers and ISPs. And Penguin Mints.- Network traffic costs money no matter where you are on the planet.
Yup, it does. And on this part of the planet it costs roughly US$20/month flat rate. If it costs more on your part of the planet, take it up with Tony Blair, Lester Bird, Ryutaro Hashimoto, the Masons or whoever runs your grubby little country.Now, there are metered services at the commercial level, but I'd vigorously argue that blocking streaming media and graphics-heavy sites (hey, make everyone use Lynx! :-) would make much more difference than eliminating Spam.
Well, my guess is that everyone in the Linux kernel CREDITS list got hit for a start. That's pretty much the only place where I can be found on the Open Source scene. Who knows? :)
Unfortunately, I'm based in England. Waaah.
But I didn't received any e-mail from redhat.. =( If anyone is not going to use their offer, please forward it to: gene@erachampion.com Thank You, Gene Ruebsamen
For all of you that think this is spam think again this is a GREAT offer. Why is this great? Well simply put this is an offer to get in on the ground floor price before it shoots through the ceiling. By the end of the day the price will more then likely be triple or more the initial price and that is quite a return on an investment. If you sell at the end of the day it's quite profitable.
Admittedly some do not have the $$ to open an E*Trade account and partake but those who can it is an excellent offer. All I can say is that Red Hat did have a good idea here since it is an excellent offer (whether you like the company or not) to make some $$ quite easily and with virtually no risk. No one says you *HAVE* to hang on to the shares at the end of the day (or week) they'll be worth quite a bit more and make you a nice profit.
I only wish that I'd received an email about this however a lot of my work is not high profile or where they would have heard of me. For the developers overseas all I can surmise is that RedHat did it in this way by email to limit the number of offers to just those developing and not to where the average person could get the info and take advantage of it. Why all the Debian developers? Simple they probably needed a quick and easy way to get the info out or it would be useless to waste a lot of people's time just looking for people that would be interested.
This is in a way them saying thank you to the developers by letting them make some $$ off of their IPO whether they like the company or not.
As I work only on a small open source project, my name was not broadcast to the world as an Open Source Community Member. But seeing as I do have spare cash, if anyone who did get the offer doesn't want to take advantage of it, I'd be happy to open the account and give a hefty percentage of any potential profit to whomever gave me the opportunity. You can email me at artoo@home.com if you're interested.
-- jar
Personally, I think this is a great reward. First, it's not spam--If you were sent a username and password for an online trading account worth a million bucks unsolicited in the e-mail (with a reason and your name attached) would you turn it down? No. You would be jealous of the guy next to you if he got that account though. It's also very much in the "directed shares" category. Who made huge chunks of the product they sell, the community, so who are they trying to reward? The community. They can't get everybody (so don't bitch if you didn't get e-mailed) but they seem to have tried to hit a bunch. I've sent in patches to various packages I've worked with, and I'm not pissed that I didn't get e-mailed, but who cares, it's the thought that counts. In addition, stuff like this usually amounts to 100 shares a person, and if you have to open an account at etrade at $2000 and it opens at 20, then you just spend all the $ anyway, so don't bitch about the $$.
Posted by shaver@netscape.com:
``Worse, they spammed lots of non-US people, that aren't even eligible.'' I must have missed the RFC on ``determining US taxresidency from email address''. I'm not a US resident either, and I got the note (4 times!), but I'm not upset. (Well, I'm not the SEC's biggest fan, but I'm certainly not upset with Red Hat because they weren't able to perfectly execute on what I think is an excellently nice plan.) I don't even want to think about what kind of hoops they had to jump through to give special opportunity to what are, from the SEC's perspective, just a bunch of randomly chosen email addresses.
i would love to. perhaps you'd make it easier for us (if you are serious of course) by not making us hunt for your email address, like RedHat did.
punkigor@usa.net
---
I used to be with it Then they changed what it was Now what I'm with isn't it and what's it seems weird and scary to
--
--
Think Green... Burn only 100% recycled dinosaurs in you car.
I know someone who's in MAINTAINERS, but not CREDITS and they haven't received anything yet.
I'm a developer on an open source project. I've contributed very very little to the Linux open source community, but am an active developer on a Windows open source project to make Windows more customizable (kind of like X).
Does this qualify me? No, for some reason.
I just thought I'd ask: Who qualifies? Is it anyone who has written open source code? If that's the case, many many of us deserve a few shares.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Let's face it, E-trade is one of the few ways Joe Bloes like us are going to get our hands on IPO stock. The big boys on Wall Street pick up most of it, and it's damn hard to get any when you only want to buy a hundred shares. I don't think you are justified in denouncing it as spam. Delete the email. Rant a bit. Sleep on it.
Also, how is Red Hat to know whether you are a non-US citizen? I use a NetForward address to (very primitively) protect my privacy, and there's no quick way to tell where the email ends up (as it turns out, I'm Canadian. Boo hoo, no IPO for me). Admittedly, they could simply not send email to anyone whos email address ends in a foreign country's suffix, but you might just be an American student working abroad.
I support their decision to offer IPO stock to everyone associated with the Open Source community. It's very generous of them.
Wah!
sorry i dont understand this shortform ..
-- Hasbullah bin Pit (sebol)
Quit your bitching!!!! I can't believe you're calling redhat spammers... Sure they sent out emails to many people, but they are doing these people a favor. They are not getting any personal gain out of it.
Here's what happens:
1. Red Hat emails a bunch of developers to tell them about their IPO and how they can get in early.
2. Developer chooses to open an etrade account (initial $1000 DEPOSIT, not a fee, you can get your money back by closing the account)
3. Red Hat's IPO happens. The price will (probably 99.9% chance) shoot up way above the initial offering, and then eventually drop off a little (or possibly alot).
4. Developer sells off stock at much higher price than he bought it for and makes lots of money, or chooses to hold on to it expecting it to climb higher sometime in the future.
Hmmm, who wins at this???? Well, the developer makes some money (looks like a good way for RedHat to give a little extra thanks back to the Open Source community), and etrade gets 29.90 for executing the trades for you (BFD, you just made a bunch of cash). Red Hat doesn't really gain anything out of it except maybe a short-lived bias towards their distribution.
Red Hat doesn't necessarily make the best distribution, but they definitely don't make the worst. They've had to put up with a lot of shit over the last few months because many people in the Linux community seem to adopt the idea that making money is evil and Red Hat is turning into Microsoft. Just because they try to turn a buck doesn't make them evil. Suse made more money last quarter than RedHat and they don't seem be criticized as much. Quit your complaining about this and take it for what it is... a simple thank you from Red Hat to the developers of open source software.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Your proof ain't worth nuthin around here.
Here's why:
Anyone, citizen, resident alien, non-resident alien, ex-patriate, martian can trade stocks and mutual funds in the US market. So it is no surprise that you know people with non-resident status who are able to do so.
However, IPOs are another beast all together with special rules and what not.
My advice to the initial poster is to try to sign up, see what happens, worst they can do to you is not sell you any shares. It isn't like they are going to deport you or anything.
Let's face it, E-trade is one of the few ways Joe Bloes like us are going to get our hands on IPO stock. The big boys on Wall Street pick up most of it, and it's damn hard to get any when you only want to buy a hundred shares. I don't think you are justified in denouncing it as spam. Delete the email. Rant a bit. Sleep on it.
Also, how is Red Hat to know whether you are a non-US citizen? I use a NetForward address to (very primitively) protect my privacy, and there's no quick way to tell where the email ends up (as it turns out, I'm Canadian. Boo hoo, no IPO for me). Admittedly, they could simply not send email to anyone whos email address ends in a foreign country's suffix, but you might just be an American student working abroad.
I support their decision to offer IPO stock to everyone associated with the Open Source community. It's very generous of them. Think how much ranting would be going on if they only offered their IPO stock to Red Hat developers.
Wah!
Who counts? People who's software is in Redhat? On the contrib net? People who can verify that they've written something? (I've written a mean implementation of hello world in C...fastest algorithm YOU'LL ever see..)
Goldman Sachs is doing the underwriting - aka since it's a small offering they're going to offer it to their clients first. Unless you're a client of GS chances are you'll have to buy it on the open market not at IPO. That sucks.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Not exactly. I got mine from the address that I signed up for Bugzilla with. It appears to be those that either A.) send code to RedHat, or B.) support the open source community by beta testing RedHat software (like me)
I haven't submitted any code, but I did submit bug reports for Redhat 5.9 (starbuck)
Another reason could also be included... C.) those that know people at RedHat because, since I live in the RTP area, I know a few of them, two of them more than just aquaintences
---The proceeding comments were not paid for by the following advertisers.
Posted by Moneycrawler:
This story is a farse. For RED HAT to send such a message would be a direct violation of the SEC code and could very well affect their IPO status. I would say that RED HAT isn't going to go very far if they did in fact send this message. Looks like another case of email fraud to me.
Well, I'm currently involved in Open Source development efforts, mostly with the newly released AOLserver 3 source code. I guess I don't get an email because I'm not on kernel contributor or redhat contributor lists (although I have made bug reports on 3com ethernet driver code in the past). Anyway, I have an Etrade account and wouldn't mind getting in on this offer to snag 100 shares... anyone who did get the email and can't / doesn't want to get in on IPO, email me at gabriel@media.mit.edu... I figure this gives me a much better chance at getting some of these IPO shares than throwing in my hat with every other small investor.
Also, how is Red Hat to know whether you are a non-US citizen?
They could research the people they're going to give the offer. For example, my non-USness is quite obvious if you're a human being looking for info on me. If they had done that, I wouldn't call this spam.
I'm in! How does the whole thing with etrade work anyways.
jonathantryan@netscape.net
Hey if you can't use yours help your fellow linux user by e-mailing it to me at linuxfreak@yahoo.com I'll put it to good use! Someone hook me up here.....
Still need help filling out the survey correctly? I have received several IPO's through E-Trade. However, I didn't receive the Red Hat e-mail. If you'll help me, I'll help you. morgan59@etrademail.com
I'm an F-1 student at USC, and haven't been in the US for more than an year. However, I do have an SSN. Does that qualify me as a "US resident"?
;-))
Either way, how can I find out? ie, who do I talk to? (Er... I'd really prefer a free (as in beer) source
amit
I would like to get some shares if possible.
I already have an E*Trade account, but
those bastards always reject me when I fill
out the IPO questionnaire (without any
explaination).
shadow29a@aol.com
Those bastards always reject me without
explaination.
shadow29a@aol.com
I appreciate the debate on this board, spam or no spam. And if anyone here isn't interested in participating in the offer - please email me at thegolfking@excite.com - I will be willing to buy your user name and password from you
yes, the email may say its not transferable - but do you always believe everything you read. All it is is a password to get into the offer on e-trade's system. There is no way to tel who used it and who didn't.
So, if you aren't interested in trying to invest in this - I'd appreciate a chance to take your place - and I will pay you for it as well.
Please call me -- I would love to be able to buy shares. I have an Etrade account. You may call me at 800-872-6684. We can discuss the details. Ask for Hersh Stern. Thanks
So which one of Microsoft's PR firms do you
think posted this insightful message?
The email address mine came in to doesn't appear in my measely little GPL'ed contributions, not that I can recall. But I did use that address to send an email to "bugs" and "security" @redhat.com a little while ago.
No complaints here. Now I just gotta figure if I want to play the IPO game...
I'm willing to buy these shares myself anyday.
RedHat is doing these open source developers a favor, I don't think this should be considered SPAM at all (I wish *I* had got the letter!) Particularly the Debian contributors, who do everything for peanuts (and have no opportunity to make money) but produce an outstanding product. This is an offer to them to reap some of the reward that is justly theirs.
In fact, I think what would be more upsetting is if they _didnt_ take such action. Then they look greedy and ungrateful.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
It may be a great offer. I don't comment on that. However, content does not define what's spam. Spam is an unsolicited mass mail. And that's what this was.
I would have thought RH knew better. :-(
My guess is that they're just looking at people who have actually written code for the kernel and major software projects would be my guess.
Congratulations to everyone who did get in on it!!
Deepak Saxena
Project Director, Linux Demo Day '99
Deepak Saxena
"Computers are useless, they can only give you answers" - Picasso
Keep in mind when people buy stock in a company regardless of who those people are they are giving money to the company in this case Fud Hat hopes to raise $96 million.
They have every intention of using that money directly for their own benefit. That's why company's go public.
I have done a non-trivial amount of work (documentation, patches, working on message threading DHTML) on IMP but did not end up on the list. If anyone would feel comfortable allowing me to buy the 100 shares offered to them that they cannot or do not wish to use, please let me know at jase@deadbeets.com. I'll be buying RHAT one way or another and keeping it indefinitely. It would be nice to be in on the ground floor.
Thank you very much.
Jason Dufair
"Those who know don't have the words to tell
Jason Dufair
"Those who know don't have the words to tell
and the ones with the words don't know too w
How many emails and of what nature constitute spam? Its a very subjective thing. You can't go sign up for a mailing list, and then sue the mailing list maintainers for "spamming" you.
If you're annoyed you couldn't invest, or that you're a Debian developer and aren't interested, then that's different.
Unless they sent you like 5 emails I don't see why you're whining.
Dangit. If this were to give me another week or two I'd be able to get in on it. grrrr. I got an invite too! *sob*
I was very pleased to get an invitation myself, I'm going to open up an etrade account tomorow and secure my hundred shares right afterwards. I can't believe there are people complaining this is spam. While technically it is, it is really sent with good intentions, which in the long run is all that counts. The pulled this move to allow developers and contributors to get on the ground floor, the people who helped build them, which is a very classy tihng to do.
Not really... etrade does this all the time. Any time I'm on etrade I can go into their IPO room and see the three or four coming up and get into the lottery. They usually have a good number of shares, but they lottery them off at about 200 per person who has expressed interest until they run out (which is usually before the bottom of the list, so you're not guerenteed to get in on it)
Stock companies have always used their share of an intial disbursement (IPO stock at the opening price) to bring in new customers. Most investment houses won't let you in on one unless you open a huge account with them (we're talking the seven-figure level). Etrade takes a different tact - they let any customer into the initial disbursment (provied you meet their "profile") on this lottery basis, and try to get LOTS of accounts with the publicity rather than a few big accounts like Merill Lynch would do.
The really different thing here is them sending out email advertisements of it. In the past they've always only had ads on the IPO company's web page and other similar places.
hitchhiker.
You can't make any money if no one invests. If everyone is greedy, and thinks they'll make a buck or two, then everyone will. Some will lose money as well as the price fluctuates. Its the nature of the game. If you want to make real money, invest for the long term in companies with forseeable futures. I mean, what if Red Hat gets a sudden user backlash and everyone switches to SuSE? The user community is fickle. We should learn this well from what happened to the 3dfx stock.
At least, assuming that the numbers in the account usernames incremented from 1 evenly; I'm 3060.
I'm not sure what exactly the criteria are - I've posted 1000+ comp.os.linux.setup responses and added entries to the Red Hat Linux User's FAQ, so it's possible one of those sources got scoured. I used to keep up a small Linux portal site, but it's been through 2 forced moves now, and until I get time to do heavy work on it again I'm not giving out the new URL.
But those are all sideline things. The only code for Linux I've ever publically released was one kernel patch, though, and that was nothing more than a hand-application of Peeter Joot's dynamic MSGMAX code that didn't apply cleanly with patch against 2.2. I didn't bother to put my name in any of the comments for that one; I hope Red Hat didn't just scour linux-kernel for patch contributers.
Someone else said they sent something to everyone who maintains a package for Debian - that was quite well done of them.
So, some people have this comment graded up, since it's long, right? Wow. That's pretty funny.
It's not a farse and it's not a violation of the SEC code. I've received these offers before from companies IPOing through E*Trade. RedHat isn't the first and it's perfectly legal.
But good luck actually getting IPO stock from Etrade. Myself and two friends have been trying for six months now. The score? One of my friends got in on 1 out of 10 or so that he tried. The other didn't get in on any. I quit after being turned over and over and over.
E*Trade's IPO stock goes to their Preferred Customers (read: big $$ in their account) first and rarely are there any shares left for us peons.
I signed up for the RH one, but don't have any delusions about actually getting any.
-- Craig Miller Austin, TX
Here's the catch. They potentially make LESS money by offering the stock at it's inital price to thousands of developers, than they would if they just sold it all on the open market where the first bid starts driving up the cost of each share.
The subject says it all, it's been very cool on Red Hat's part to have such an offer but unfortunately, living in Canada, I am not able to participate.
While I do understand that this is due to various SEC issues and is not Red Hat's fault, it's very unfortunate that only US-resident Linux developers will be able to partecipate in this and not everybody who contributed to Linux's success regardless of where one happens to reside.
-- the cake is a lie
Anybody with an ETRADE account able to get
in yet?
I've entered my logins and passwords,
get all the way to the "indication of
interest" screen, and then simply
get a page with the Red Hat logo, some
info about the offering, but nowhere
to enter number of shares.
Guess that answers it
I've seen many postings on both sides of an apperent debate. Some people claim that this is some kind of underhanded move by the people at etrade. Others would sugest that this shows how RedHat cares about its customers. One person likened it to RedHat throwing money in our faces. I say to all of you, "Calm It!"
Now, a few things. First the way IPO's work is like this. The portion of the company to be sold publicly is given to one main (in this case two) brokers. They in turn sell the stock at a price determined jointly by the broker, the company, and to some extend SEC rules. The borkers sell a portion to "friends and family" of the company having the IPO, a portion to the brokers customers, and a large part to other brokers. The other brokers sell some to their customers and put some into mutual funds etc. It is the small portion that goes to the brokers customers that apears to be in dispute.
It is not uncommon for this to be mostly sold to the winners of a lottery; however, some of this stock can be given to people in the industry. In the case of RedHat there just hapens to be a lot of people in the industry.
Yes, ETrade can require you to have an acount (they sell it to their customers remember). This creates competion and is why everyone wants to sponsor IPOs.
You killfile people based on a couple posts?
I recieved one too.. only thing is you need an etrade account to buy it seems.. though it is a nice gesture..
Only 'flamers' flame!
Most likely those who are bitching about this don't know how to code and are just angry that they weren't afforded the same opportunity as people that HAVE contributed to Linux and ARE able to code.
sigh. Why I wasted my time responding to your crap I don't know.
I'm just wondering what you think is so cool about posting a comment like this.....
..... well, I don't like that).
Meanwhile, back to the subject at hand, I think it's interesting that they're willing to offer the stock for less $ (right?), but personally, how do they know/define who's contributed, and how do they ensure that this "privilege" isn't abused? And what about all those wonderful people out there that have done great stuff for the open source community, etc.. but don't get opportunities like this? (tough luck?
However, I'd like to add that it's not that I want any, because I think stock/stock market is boring, but hey, I know there are lots of people out there who'd love to get their hands on Red Hat stock... I know a few myself too, of course.... but anyway.... so much for the effort. At least I'll say this much: Nice job.
Insert mind here.
I'm in bugzilla, too - it looks like they may have grabbed email addresses from there.
I'm working on an open source project, but I haven't got very far yet. :-(
I have done some documentation before, though, but I don't think the maintainer has used it yet...
--
Anyone who want to spare the 100 shares if they are not using it? There is some money that I can use for an account! Please let me know: linuxfornewbies@hotmail.com
Come on guys, this is a great chance that Red Hat is offering. If anyone got e-mailed a username/password and is not intending on using it, please send it to me. joemayfair@usa.net. We should be supporting things like this, not labelling it spam.
If no one buys the stock, Goldman Sachs has to buy it. They get the $96m either way.
I continue to be impressed with the degree to which people feel compelled to complain about Red Hat. Yes, they're making money off the IPO (I mean really, that's what IPO's do). No, they are not especially making money off providing developers allocations of their stock. If they didn't use those allocations, institutions and random investors would eat them up and they would make exactly the same amount of money. The entire IPO is going to be sold.
Did it make sense to offer various people in the community free shares? Probably, since they sell open source software and those people are involved with development. Did they do a perfect job of selecting all the developers they should have? Probably not. I doubt they had time to develop dossiers on everyone they wanted to send an email to. Was it spam? Only in the sense that someone who sent a voucher for $1,000 to 1,000 people would be sending out spam. It's found money, people. If you can open an account with eTrade and want to, do it; otherwise, dismiss the whole thing out of hand. Either way, there's no call to be angry.
Did I get the offer? No. Am I paid in any way by Red Hat? No. But it doesn't seem especially reasonable to yell at them for trying to spread the wealth a bit. Their privilege to offer, yours to decline.
Rob Levin
The Red Hat initial registration statement says that RH has reserved 800,000 shares (out of the base 6,000,000 share IPO) for the directed share program, of which the open source developer offer is part. That's a fairly hefty chunk... if it were to all go into 100 share lots, that's 8000 people. I couldn't really guess how many people received letters from Red Hat, but I would be surprised if there were really this many Linux developers.
So, it's possible that people may be able to get somewhat more than 100 shares. I would not be too surprised if 200-400 were possible but would doubt that anyone could get >1000.
I've contributed to Linux since 1991, and I didn't get an invite. I guess it's just for the people who yell loud enough and beat their chest about all the stuff they've done.
Funny, I didn't notice Bob Young's name on the mailing list when Fred van Kempen and Alan Cox and Remy Card and all the rest were trashing machines in the early days...
I don't have a debian.org address, so I guess I'm out of luck. I guess I'll just have to produce my own distribution (like I did back in 1995) and do a better job of it (not particularly hard).
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
At least on usenet kooks like ajk could be zapped
Hey, if anyone got this "spam" and wants to pass, send it to me. I'd love to get in on this...
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
I have been an avid LINUX fan for 5 years, and I am positive this is going to be one of the best IPOs this year. Beyond the IPO, Redhat has enormous potential. I want a chance to get in!
So, as long as its not illegal (and I can't see why it would be) I suggest anyone who got an invitation and doesn't plan to use it shoud go over to eBay and AUCTION IT!
Brokers normally give (sell) hot IPO allocations to their big customers as a way of saying thanks for the business. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Nothing illegal about that, even if you don't like it. I'm not sure whether the RedHat directed offering comes under any specific SEC rule, but E-trade would always have discretion as to who they allocate shares to.
As for insider trading, that only applies if you are privvy to company knowledge that isn't publically available. As far as your friends company goes, getting in on the IPO (if you can) wouldn't violate insider trading rules unless it could be proved otherwise. You're not even going to pop up on the SECs radar screen unless you're making a BIG trade that stood out from the stock's normal trading patterns. You shouldn't be worried about the IPO, but more about dumping your 50,000 shares the day before your friend's company announces an unexpected loss...
... to count as a US resident in this case. Actualy it should say perminant resident. Citizens and resident aliens are elegible acording to the SEC.
Posted by Moneycrawler:
I know a company that is going public in September . I am a good friend of the person who is taking the company public. I am not allowed, under SEC code, to get in on the IPO pre facto. How is it possible for RED HAT to discriminate as to who can get in on this IPO? Does anyone know the answer to this? Does ETRADE have some get out of jail free voucher with the Securities and Exchange Commission? I don't see how this is possible!
I've got a couple email addresses that got this RedHat offer. I don't have any idea why. I cannot think of a single thing I've done to benefit the open source community. Nor do I understand how they picked up my email address. My best guess is that they picked it up from an anonymous ftp password.
It all kind of leaves me worried that this isn't a very exclusive offer.
Oh well, I'm hooked, anyone want to go in with me on a few thousand shares or something?
I could use that 100 shares personally, i think i'd have gotten an invite if i hadn't sacked my old email address', and errr other people in brown shoes got angry at the person that owned them :)
Red Hat Software is offering this to those people that wrote code which is something that represents a contribution to the body of software that makes up the product that they sell.
That represents value returned for value contributed.
If your only "participation" is in having bought a box from them, then you received your reward in the form of that box.
If your only "participation" is in reading Slashdot, then I see no connection, no value, and no reason for them to give you anything.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
It's only fitting that on the 30th anniversary of the first trip to the moon that Red Hat invites their buddies along on another moon shot.
What percentage of the shares are being sold and what day is it scheduled for?
Jeez. I think the idea really sucks. To me, your comment (?=joke) is much closer to truth than fiction.
The question is, should geeks spend time and effort, and invest hope for the futures of their families, as redhat/amazon.com speculators, or as code contributors. The mentality of a wall street warrior and a code warrior are not the same thing.
I don't mean to be a sour pus, but the problems is that, on the long term, the mental effort which conceives transfer of new wealth by speculation and ficitious bank accounts is immiscible with and will eventually subsume all hopes of creating new wealth by coding actual it-does-something type usable programs, and contribution of same so as to maintain a growing and inclusive community.
Instead of growing new wealth, by hard work, is this community of friendly cooperative neighbors, to be subsumed by the sparkling rewards of creating fast and easy "wealth," in the vein of my-money not yours, by IPOs and speculation. Once the coders are sucked out of the OS-GPL community and into the whirlpool, where new "wealth" is created by transfer and speculation, as in damn it's up (haha, I win-you lose) and damn it's down (oh shit, someone gambled better than me, I better sharpen up my IPO skills), etc., then it's amazon.com everywhere.
My hope is that redhat will not end up pre-occupied with the pressure to produce *numeric* profit, as opposed to producing real code. However, the reality is that, all players who enter into that sacred cesspool must eventually succumb. Once you accept the concept that profit is a number (and you deny the concept that actual profit is new actual wealth or code), you are food on the table of amazon.com.
My fear is that the fanatic Bob Young is slowing starting to sound more and more like a young fanatic named Bill Gates from twenty years ago. Notwithstanding the characteristic visionary type personality, the common points of thinking are, first take the glow, i.e. the subtle aura of power which comes from a fingering by the old buzzards, crows and fascist nazi bigots who *still* control ibm and intel, and then take the dough, by turning loose the parasites of wall street, with their creation of new wealth by fast talk and fictitious currency (borrowed from the fed with perpetual interest owed no less, and maintained in a fictitious "bank" account), instead of by creating real code, which is where the actual productive useful wealth is.
Certainly some interesting responses to all of this. Personally, I think that this was a very nice gesture on the part of RedHat. But can you image what would have happened if CmdrTaco had decided to go public with a /. IPO instead of selling to Andover?
/. user accounts first dibs at the IPO; unfortunately, he announces this by a mass e-mailing. This triggers a Jon Katz story about /. spam, which results in a heated /. discussion about /. spam, which results in a Jon Katz story about the discussion about /. spam.
/. effect. In Rob's filing with the SEC after the IPO, he sheepishly has to report that the largest shareholder is someone named Anonymous Coward.
/. poll: I own 1) 0-10 shares, 2) 10-100, 3) 300-1000, 4) 954+, 5) JarJar sucks. Unfortunately, someone inadvertently comments about the right to own stock. You know where this eventually leads to.
Rob generously offers
eTrade goes down under the immense
This is followed by
Moderation points are partly determined by the number of shares you own. This proves disastrous as MEEPT posts start at a +5.
See? Write screen savers, get in on IPOs. Who said screen savers were useless.
Too bad E*Trade is involved, though -- E*Trade SUCKS . Completely unusable site, and I've been trying to fucking close my account with them for months -- they just won't do it. There's no way to do it on the web site, if you email them they say you have to do it in writing, and when I ask them in writing, they keep sending my letters back to me. It seems that the only way they can keep customers is to make it impossible for anyone to cease being a customer.
I didn't even ask to be a customer in the first place, if you wanted to participate in Netscape's Employee Stock Purchase Program, you had to use E*Trade, there was no other option.
Not true. The company making the IPO _always_ gets their initial price on every share. They sell it to institutional investors (like brokerages, usually), and then those people sell it on the open market.
What are the right answers to the survey you have to fill out to be approved?
If it liked you, what did you say?
What's the special thing with this email? As
I understand everybody with an ETrade account
can participate in the offering, even if they
don't know what open source is.
www.etrade.com.au
What about us aussies? we have etrade, what stops
us from buying it too?
Jeez
Someone should run etrade's site through the demoronizer to get rid of all that MS-HTML. Yuck.