Red Hat IPO Fiasco Worries E*Trade Stock Holders

An anonymous reader wrote in to say that earlier this morning, discussions about the Red Hat IPO fiasco started appearing on the E*Trade stock board at Yahoo. E*Trade stock holders are worried about class action suits, complaints to the SEC, and even cracking of E*Trade's servers. I've heard many things (nothing official yet) that all the major outstanding issues will be resolved on monday. I still don't know if I'm eligible, although I did get the letter.

Comments

Class action lawsuits

[John Fulmer]

Er..doesn't class action lawsuits require a, um, class of people to agree to sue? It seems to me that a bunch of geeks like myself to suing over what amounts to be nothing is pretty laughable.

The problem is that very money motivated individuals have problems understanding non-money motivated individuals.

The only thing that worries me is that a opportunistic lawyer could sucker a some into a lawsuit 'freeride', where they would bear the cost and you would get money (or consideration) if they won, and lose nothing if they lost. That seems to be where most supposed 'class-action' lawsuits come from these days.

jf

And some think /.ers are immature

[ErikSev]

Jeez, compared to the sig to noise ration of these investment morons to, Slashdot looks like paradise! Half of em are spreading dis info in order to short the stock, a few honestly believe band of evil "hackers" are going to come out to destroy the computers, and some are just plain stupid. Then ETrade says extremely smart Linux programmers are "unfit to invest"?!?

Erik

Ye gods!!!

[Surazal]

Well this turned out to be a fine mess!

I suddest people keep a cool head about this. Redhat's IPO ain't the beginning nor the end of Linux. And it's certainly not the beginning nor end of your careers either. An IPO is just that. An Initial Public Offering. A way for businesses to raise money through selling portions of itself to the public. It's *not* the ultimate solution to redeem yourself for years of selfless work. Hey, that's what selfless work is. Sometimes it's thankless too.

Red Hat is taking steps to do damage control here. Let's let them work this out. I suspect that in the end this will work out for most people who got "the letter". If we let it. You decide.

I'd also like to suggest that there might have been a slight, um, overreaction on the part of, oh, everybody. :^) Whether this was by tetosterone-laden teenagers or disgruntled programmers or corporate marketting agents spreading their FUD through covert channels, I think that, well, we need to keep this from escalating. Despite not getting the letter, I might want to invest in this company in the future. Actually, I might want to use Linux at whatever jobs I get in the future, too. This IPO will help. Screaming holy hell about being denied an opprotunity and writing angry letters to Wired and Yahoo! and Salon won't. I mean, it really really won't.

Well, I hope the best for Red Hat and all parties involved. Here's to a successful IPO, and World Domination(TM). :^)