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What if Red Hat bought SCO?

Posted by Hemos on from the it'd-be-an-interesting-move dept.

Thexder wrote to us with a curious piece on what RH should do with all it's new found wealth: buy SCO. It's a crazy idea, and gives me a headache when I try to analyze it, but the author does have some interesting points.

disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in Red Hat

2 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. What if pigs had wings? by BadlandZ · · Score: 5
    What if Red Hat bought SCO? Who Cares. What if Pigs had Wings? Now there is something just as idiotic, but interesting too!

    Using thier money to "Aquire" more property is not the way of Red Hat. That is just plain stupid, and, only ONE of the suggestions in the article.

    I call you attention to item number 5, intitled "Tools." Ahhhh... People use applications, not OS's... Hmmm...

    Red Hat has money, now, if they want to keep the support of the Open Source Community they need to:

    • Dump resources into GCC, if GCC dies, Linux dies with it.
    • Dump resources into a GPL office suite, without KOffice or a Gnome Office, or some other open source office suite, in a few years everyone will just be downloading Red Hat for free, and buying a $400 copy of Microsoft Office for Linux every year.
    • Make what they have now work better. One of the most commonly used applications that ships with Red Hat is Netscape, you would think that Red Hat would have an intrest in getting all the plugins and bells and whistles working out of the box, so thier customers have something usefull after installation.
    • Subscription Plans Ditch the $60 box set whenever we feel like releasing something new, and be up front and honest. Sell a "Subscription to Red Hat Linux" for about $100 that includes 4 complete CD sets per year, that come out on a regular schedule, and are sure to have the most up to date software from the whole GPL community. People with a lot of bandwidth don't usually buy a boxed set anyway, so give the people without bandwidth the product they really want! (and if you offer to throw in a "emergency patchs" CD in once in a while for major security issues, the cost of an extra $5 CD per customer will probably be sure to get you thousands of people standing in line to pay $100 a year for a subscription that insures security).
    • Cygnus...not SCO If you insist on "buying someone out" at least buy some one with integrity...
  2. My open letter to red hat by Shoeboy · · Score: 5

    Dear Mr. Young and the Red Hat, Inc. Board of Directors,

    Your recent, wildly successful, IPO has shown, to the joy of Linux fans everywhere, that Wall Street investors are smoking crack. Linux is destined to lower profit margins on software sales for everyone, but investors still see you as a potential gold mine. Now is the time to leverage your core buisness asset of crack smoking investors. As crack and glass pipe supplies have been drastically lowered during your IPO you need to invest in entities that will ensure an adequate supply of crack cocaine for future stock growth. Allow me to suggest the nation of Columbia.

    Acquisitions: There are occasional rumors that Red Hat would consider buying a small european nation such as Luxembourg with its newfound wealth. Bad idea. Who owns Luxembourg? Who do you write the check to.
    Instead, and this is key: buy Columbia from the Medelin cartel. This will provide a sufficient amount of coca plants to fuel irrational investor exuberance into the next millenium. What does this bring you?

    Equatorial climates and loads of coke. What better way to enjoy your wealth?

    Columbia will also give you easy access to Peru's shining path guerillas. These rebels are brutal fanatics, just like linux users. Imagine unleashing a horde trained jungle warriors in the midst of Redmond. Instant coup de etat and you're the CEO of Microsoft! Then you can let your investors snort cocaine off the top of Steve Ballmers glistening scalp. What a way to build market enthusiasm.

    Revenue. IPO money is great, but the real money is in narcotics smuggling. You currently only have 10 million in revenue. That's paltry compared to the amount you could make by cornering the market on coke.

    CIA contacts. That's right, once you're a major player in the drug arena, the government will bend over backwards for you. They need the drugs for controling inner city unrest and will gladly charge mandrake and debian with antitrust suits just to keep the supply going.

    Human capital. Linux programmers are cool to have around, but what company can afford to be without mules? You can use the cartel's drug runners to swallow encryption algorithms and smuggle them out of the country. This will allow you to be the only US software company with real encryption.

    Buy Columbia from the drug lords, it just makes sense.
    --Shoeboy