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. "

Comments

Failure May Be Useful

[Christopher B. Brown]

The Linux community has not yet had a "Pearl Harbour" or any equivalent thereof.

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...