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* :)

Comments

redhat's trying to do people a favor

[austad]

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.