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Rick Moen on LinuxOne's IPO
nickm writes "Many eyebrows were raised when Linux One announced its upcoming IPO. None were raised quite so high, however, as commentator Rick Moen's. The story is up on LinuxWorld Online. Truly a bizarre tale - check it out. "
I refer the honorable gentleman to:
:o)
http://www.definitelinux.com/
A UK based linux distro based on Redhat with all the extra securty goodies that Redhat can't export to the UK.
Anyway - the UK is in Europe you dope!
I agree. Having strict rules may keep out scammers, but it'll also keep out legitimate companies. I think the best defense is the one employed currently. Lot's of research, and some common sense.
I would hope that all potential investors do enough research to determine what kind of company LinuxOne really is.
-Brent--
That could, of course, display bias on my part :-).
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Andover.net appears to be doing their IPO slightly differently, a so-called OpenIPO. Basically you can place your bid for a given number of shares at a given price, and then shares are allocated independent of the number of shares you asked for, giving everyone a chance.
See http://www.wrhambrecht.com/ and http://open.andover.net/ for more information, and get in on the action without any need for karma!
Are they trying to get attention and free advertising?
In a small town there is nothing worse than no one knowing you. "Who is that person?" But...
Except if the person happens to be a crook. LinuxOne, in my opinion, does not deserve to be called a gadfly. The historical background of the character(s) behind the secenes suggest that man wishes to milk the Linux name just because it can legaly be done. To ride Linux for all its worth. Let's give him that ride and if he wishes to leave town by rail, let's help him.
Nope.. when I was checking this out back when Rick posted his findings on LinuxOne (check Rick's archives of SVLUG.. www.linuxmafia.com.. I forget where. Or use, http://www.egroups.com/list/svlug/), I looked that up. VA is asking for LNUX, and L1 wanings LINX. Big difference, huh? The basic discussion from the ticker ended that it was enevitable, that at least VA was a trusted friend, and L1 is almost certaintly using the ticker for an IPO scam. Have fun in the archives.. there's lots of good discussions stored there.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
It seems to me that whomsoever grabs LNUX has a better chance of being the public face of Linux on Wall Street. LINX sounds like some cheesy online service circa 1985.
hehe, umm.. its right here...
http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/svlug-archive/
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
Moen did nothing of the kind. He stated things, he did not make major judgement calls or asumptions, he merely stated the fact. The distro being almost entirely RedHat, them not even using it on their server, the server not being run by a trained network administrator, and various other facts are from his investigation.
To know whether LinuxOne is a threat, someone has to dig a bit, and he took the initial step. If you don't believe he took enough time looking over the company / product, look at the SVLUG archives at ebay or linuxmafia (if you want direct links, get it from my earlier post).
Rick is known for being opinionated, but also being dedicated, knowledgable, and correct (as painful as it can be, at times). Rick has no call on whether a company can rightfully be a friend to the community, nor has he made that claim, and never could. I personally don't trust LinuxOne, from Rick's findings (here, and posted on SVLUG), from the IPO issue (ie. ticker symbol), and the info on the web site.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
Redhat played by the rules of the GPL, spent some time to build a market, and invested time and money in development projects such as Gnome and kernel development. They were more than fair, in fact since they released their own utilities under the GPL, including the installer. Because of this, anyone can repackage and resell a Redhat based distribution.
Whether or not their stock price is valued at an appropriate level is a matter for the stockholders to decide. I don't believe they have done any creative accounting to artificially raise their stock price.
As for the programmers that wrote the software at the base of Redhat's distribution, all of them released their code as open source, apparently with little money motivation. Redhat did try, somewhat successfully, to include these people in the IPO game, but I don't think they had any obligation to do so.
In short, Redhat adds value to a collection of open source software through testing, indpendent development, and support. They go beyond their legal requirements in giving back to the open software community. And a fair number of people are willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money on their stock. I see nothing inherently unfair about that.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Rick'sno journalist, he's a user. I wont go any more because I already defended him once.
The problem here is not that LinuxOne shouldn't make money off Linux, be allowed to exist, or that it could do nothing for us, but that from what we know so far, they have done very little. They have little of a product, a copy of Redhat Linux, and they have made deals with major names out of the blue (with one, it sounds, they are not following through on). In many ways, it sounds like they are going after an IPO scam, trying to make money off the Linux hype, etc. No one likes a company that scams investors and rides the title wave of someone elses (many someones) success. That's what many people fear, and Rick put his findings up. If LinuxOne doesn't disapear, others will do the same until we know what LinuxOne is, and what they're doing.
To survive, we have to be suspicious, because we have no entity to protect us. Its a natural reaction for self preservation.
PS. NetBSD is not obscure. I wish it would get more press, considering there are many ports of it that make a better system than Linux.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
This venture will inevitably fail. They have no product yet, they already have too many competitors, both in the domestic and international markets, and they don't seem to have any business sense, let alone much technical expertise.
However, it is also inevitable that someone will say "Ooh, it says Linux, so I should buy some of the IPO! Yeah baby yeah, I'm gonna be rich!" The stock price, however, along with the trading volumes, will eventually dwindle down so as to be insignificant. When this happens, people hwo invest without doing the slightest bit of research will be well-rewarded for their laziness and greed.
- Drew
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
The state of affairs in the USA stock market depends on "buzzword IPOs".
It is not very important for the daytraders and most lay investors to know if a company is successful or not. The latest "fad" would be good enough.
First it was "Push" technology, then Internet stocks, then anything ".com", then now it is Linux. All because of the media overhype for the last 10 months or so.
So someone decides to make a buck out of it and ride the wave.
Daytrading is not investing at all, but makeing money out of daily fluctuation. The lay investor is willing to pay ten times the IPO price for a company known to lose money, but will not invest in a company that has been on the market for while with better financials.
Simple enough, but wierd all the same! Isn't it?
--
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Not really for Linux users. I doubt that linuxone will put out anything new that linux users will be interested in having the source to, even it if would be licensed under the GPL. You never know though, they may come up with an ultra-portable, 25 language version of Hello World.
.......and then change your name and move to another state to start the next lame company attempting to ride "the next big wave"
This sounds like stock speculation to me. It also sounds like a bunch of daytraders are going to possibly ruin their lives over companies like this. The article mentions that the CEO's previous venture, NetUSA, nosedived in stock value, and is now sitting at about $0.62. That's pretty incredible. It takes real talent in an economy this hot to have a stock price that bad. And also the fact that the CEO is the only person who owns any stock? If I were him, I would IPO, and as soon as all of the shares were sold that were being offered to the company, sell all of mine, do something stupid, declare bankruptcy, and walk off with god knows how much cash.
Wow, this could be the tech stock scam of the year. I think that a lot of people on wall street are going to see it for what it is before they invest in it, but I think a lot of other people are just going to buy in, trying to get their dollars into the next Microsoft or whatever the hell they think this is going to be.
As far as the software is concerned, I'm just going to ignore it. And if the security problems at their site are as bad as the author of the article suggests, be on the look out for some script kiddie to crack it Real Soon Now.
Copy a distro, slap a penguin on the cover, sell it, IPO, make big bucks,
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
While the diminishing of confidence that would result from a "serious bad occurrance" would not be particularly good, this would have the merit of encouraging people to look past your "false pretences."
A LinuxOne gone bad situation, where, in looking at the documentation, their business case is half-baked, is not going to seriously undermine the ability of Corel to keep trading on NASDAQ and the TSE. After all, they do have a big gold building on Carling Avenue, unlike LinuxOne.
The thing that is really peculiar about the LinuxOne IPO, and it is the thing that is likely to hurt them most, is the consideration that they haven't been able to get an underwriter of any sort, and particularly not a credible one. They're selling stock directly, and the comparison could be drawn that you can go out back to the truck in the parking lot and buy some stock. This has more parallels to the guy in a van driving down Bronson Avenue that says, We've got some extra car speakers. You want some? than it does to a sale through Goldman Sachs & Co.
So no, I'm not terribly worried about this; anyone with a little skepticism about finances will take this IPO with at least some of the "grains of salt" that it deserves...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
We've all been to the flea-market and seen vendors selling "look-a-likes". Dateline did a segment on those eletronic stores in the city with huge discounts painted on the window. They thought they were buying a Panasonic protable AM/FM CD boom box. What they got was a chinese look-a-like marketed under the Panasoanic name. The difference? Good luck getting support when the fake chinese version breaks. I think this IPO will do more damage to the Linux/open source community than good. On the plus side grabbing some shares of NetUSA may turn profitable if they run in sympathy with the NetUSA IPO. Don't forgot to use a stop loss.
MILLIONS of companies appear and dissapear without everyone knowing it. Why does this one have to be different?
So what about the security issues, redudant power my ass, tell me a single startup that carries multiple power circuits, pays a tier provider for redudant dns, has different accounts for everything and enough time and money to make everything perfect???
And last of all, what is a known user? I'm published in 5 os/2 books and ATLEAST a dozen linux books, i've been using linux since before it had a version #, i ran Yggdrasil back in the day, i was the first BBS in houston to offer LInux for download or purchase on 12 floppy disks, i moved on up through slackware and all the other distro's that soon followed.
And whats to say if i started a company, did an IPO, would someone criticize me and my "ethics" of business towards a "known" community?
That was the worst piece of egotistical writing i have ever seen, it brough it my ego, and i'm the most relaxed person i know.
If you know what you want, and you know to stay away, by all means its your decision. But just because they're not "linux gods in the known linux world" doesn't mean they cant be successfull or thrive in this new market.
It just irks me.. moderate me down if you want, but i still can't believe there is this notion of how things should be.. its no wonder linux could never make it to the masses, people like this doing the publishing would scare the market more then help it.
You know, i'm gonna sound extremely *COCKY* here, but this sounds exactly like Californication to me.. First it was expensive living, then the attitude, and then they started buying all the property in colorado and turning everything into resorts and now they want to turn linux into this "glamour" system that you must be portrayed in or made fun of..
hopefully redhat will keep its roots here.. but i remember when i read this same thing anout redhat a few years back, and then the same on Caldera.. oh well..
it's the Marilyn Manson strategy exactly, except instead of the Religious Right they're using Slashdot. Look at this! despite the fact that they're totally inconsequential and have sold practically nothing, they've managed to get more "buzz" than, well, practically any other linux distribution simply by the major linux news sites pointing out how stupid they are! Now imagine mr. venture capitalist, going over to his favorite search engine and typing in "linuxone" to check out this company he's heard about the IPO of. And suddenly, he finds several articles on LinuxWorld and Slashdot.org in the last couple weeks alone, much more coverage than, say, Mandrake has! He won't read these articles, of course; he'll just assume it means linuxone is an important company.
That being said, despite the fact it's an IPO i think that all future /. articles on linuxone should be placed under the "humor" icon.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
> It might not even be that bad of an idea to buy it.
I suspect you're right, provided you get in quick and out quicker.
However, knowing that there is nothing to sustain the value, I would feel like I was behaving unethically just to make a buck. So I won't be participating.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"investers"...will turn to companies that have a large proprietary component as they would be the only non-commodity distros out there.
I doubt such a grim fate would haunt any well meaning group who pride themselves with providing value added services. Yes, a RedHat CD is freely distributable, but its the brand name of RedHat that has value good as gold. When it comes to support, you would trust most the group that supports the community.
LinuxOne wishes to hide features to increase value? This just makes components inaccessable and dilutes the value of the whole distribution. Make your distro a secret and much of the community is likely not to have a vested interest in your product. We know of a closely guarded product from Redmond that requires high maintenance and a very freely available source packaged in North Carolina. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Those who wish to make sources free and extend services may provide the best value and be handsomely rewarded with name recognition. LinuxOne does not seem to chose the path of enlightenment, but wishes to introduce the path of darkness to Linux.