There was an "alert" posted last night at 10:10pm, saying that if it prices outside of the original range of $10-$12, then all conditional offers must be re-submitted. I called this morning before it priced, and asked the rep "If I indicated interest 'at the market' then do I need to re-submit my IOI?" and she said "No, only if you set a price limit." so I relaxed.
Then I saw it price at $14, and I thought "hmm... let's double-check this thing" and I called the IPO support line again - this time the guy said "No, you must re-indicate interest no matter how you indicated the first time - let me get you to a broker." So I waited on hold, nervously, and finally got through. He confirmed my request, I thanked him, and I hung up.
Re-loaded the IPO bulletin page, and it said that all conditional offers were closed.
Damn, that was fast. Remind me *never* to become a day-trader. I'm not cut out for this.
Somewhere I saw a chronological collection of Jesse Berst quotes about Linux - it was pretty funny to see him twist in the wind as Linux gained in popularity and he had to change his tune. Anyone know where that list is?
"Now this?" Um... I'm not certain that an initial price increase is a good thing even for people who got "the letter" - sure, maybe it means that there's more hype, but it also means that even those who got "the letter" have to pay 20% more for each share to take advantage of the offer...
Place of residence - you gotta live in the US. SEC rules.
Affiliations - your mom can't work for Goldman Sachs. That wouldn't be fair, now would it?
And, if you said that capital preservation was your investment style, then of course an IPO is a bad idea.
As far as net worth, etc, goes - I agree. They ask all this and accept / reject before they even know how many shares you're interested in.
However, posting the requirements would be kinda silly. "Your yearly income must be above X" (ok, click "X") "And your liquid assets must be at least "Y" (ok, click "Y")...
Perhaps literature is not such a great thing to try to read from a Pilot, but I have found that using an offline HTML reader like Plucker or AvantGo to read HOWTOs can be invaluable. Especially when it's something like the Hard Drive Upgrade HOWTO or the Boot Prompt HOWTO - times when you need information when, and perhaps because, you don't have access to your computer. Becaus these are relatively simple documents, they actually format quite well on the Pilot. The NAG and SAG also work well, although they get a bit big... I also use it for weather, and for upcoming live shows in the Austin area
The dates, memos, address book, and all that are handy, but the ability to read hypertext documents anywhere has been a great asset.
The offer was basically a chance to get your shares allocated out of a pool where the shares available / persons interested ratio was a lot higher.
There is SO much misunderstanding about this whole issue, it's really, really frustrating. And I'm afraid that it's making a lot of people (Red Hat, E*Trade, hackers, users, Slasdot - you name it) look quite bad.
1) Following rules and regulations, and 2) Covering their ass?
And, the offer letter included notice that there would be a screening, and a link to a sample eligibility form. If you think about it just a little, and look at the form, you could probably have figured out what it takes to get past the screen.
Class action suit.... geez. Whatever. This is the STOCK MARKET, folks. The rules are a bit different (and stricter) than those a lot of Linux supporters are used to, but it's not a grand conspiracy. It's the Way Things Are(tm), for better or worse. All of this "F**K ETRADE" and "F**CK RED HAT" is spitting in the wind. Might as well say "F**CK THE AMERICAN CAPITALIST SYSTEM" - and perhaps you should.:-)
The money they charge for their product is not much more than a "confidence payment" to satisfy the purchaser that they have made a legitimate business transaction.
Well, that, and then there's 30 days of phone support and 90 days of email support - that certainly is worth something.
Regarding hope or lack thereof, I really don't know what RHAT will do in the first 30 days, or in the coming year(s). It'll certainly be interesting. I'm glad to see that the Road Show was packed, because I hadn't seen that much buzz in many of the online investing sites.
Well, anyway. Let's try to clear up some more misunderstanding.
Red Hat is having an IPO. They are issuing public shares for the first time. Some people will be able to get in at the initial price (currently estimated at $10-$12 per share) which is set before the stock trades publicly. Often, this price is significantly below the price that the stock will see on the first day of trading. On the first day of trading, anyone and their dog can buy shares by calling their broker or clicking their browser.
You did not need to get "the letter" in order to get in on the initial price. E*Trade customers and customers of other brokerages also have this opportunity. However, Joe Blow E*Trade customer will be competing with thousands of people for an allotment of shares. On E*Trade, it used to be first-come first-served, but now it's a lottery system, with shares allocated in 100-share chunks.
However, Red Hat has set aside 800,000 shares to be "directed" to the open source community. That's what the letter did - it gives you a (possibly) better chance to actually have shares allocated to you out of this pool, rather than the general public pool. It guarantees that up to 8,000 people will be able to purchase at leat 100 shares each. Of course, you must be eligible to participate in the IPO in the first place.
Getting the URL, the phone number, or the password from the letter will not help you out if you didn't actually receive the letter. E*Trade is screening for this - they know who Red Hat sent the letter to originally. If you try, you will most likely be barred from ever participating in any IPO through E*Trade in the future. Them's the breaks.
Ya know, other than being clueless about the stupidity of a system where you get offered stock and are then turned down when you try to take advantage of that offer, I don't see how everyone here is so moronic.
You were not offered stock. You were offered the chance to apply for participation in this IPO, subject to all the standard rules and regulations of the E*Trade corporation and various governing bodies. What made this offer special is that you are in a smaller pool of applicants, making it more likely that if you are eligible, you may actually receive an allocation. It was stated in the letter that you would be subject to screening based on your financial background and investing experience, and a link was provided so that you could see exactly what this screening would entail.
Oh, and look at that. It seems that all the bitching and whining has had an effect.... E*Trade backed down!
I wouldn't say that they backed down - they gave you a chance to "correct errors" on your screening application. Their ass is still covered.
I've seen a lot of people complaining that they couldn't get things done in time, couldn't find the link, etc. If you're serious about this, and you're having problems, then CALL E*Trade! There were some problems with their web site, etc. The phone support was helpful, and they were able to take care of all the problems I encountered. I ended up talking to a broker rather than using the web site. What a concept.:-)
1) Call them and ask them these questions. If you got the Red Hat letter, call the number listed there. They were very helpful to me.
2) You should have had more than a week... the Red Hat letter was dated 7/20, and you have until August 4 to have a funded account and make your indication of interest. Do this from the URL that was mentioned in the letter. If you didn't get the letter, don't cheat, because E*Trade will block you from ever participating in any IPO with them again.
3) You can probably fax in your application and wire the necessary funds to speed things up and avoid the USPS.
4) $1000 isn't gonna get you jack.:-) I wouldn't be surprised if this prices at $14-$15 per share, sold in 100 share lots. And I assume that there's a fee for the transaction, as well.
Now - if you were screened out the first time due to financial background or trading experience, I don't want to hear a single complaint about how you lost your money on this investment. Kapisch?!:) (Of course, I hope no one loses... but I really don't know how this thing will go!)
I also received the offer letter from Red Hat, begged, borrowed and stole $1500 to open my E*Trade account, and in completing my Indication of Interest I found I was not elegible.
Well, damn, I don't mean to sound harsh, but if you had to beg, borrow, and steal to get your $1500 (which actually may not even cover it, if they re-price above $15) then why are you even considering this investment?
Oh great... Something else to beat up on Red Hat for. Not only are they too commercial and ready to become the next micros~1 of Linux, they also steal candy from babies and fool poor coders into thinking they'll become millionaires. (/sarcasm off)
There are financial realities at work here, folks. Not everyone will be able to participate. Red Hat certainly didn't know who would and would not have the necessary funds and experience to participate. They sent out the letter to a ton of people, which was a generous thing to do. Those who can take advantage of it will. Unfortunately, the Nasdaq is not free as in speech and it is not free as in beer, and some people will be left out. There's nothing that Red Hat can do about that.
It's unfortunate that you're feeling burnt by this, but I really think that it is out of Red Hat's control. E*Trade is one of the underwriters (I think that's the right term...) for this IPO, and they can sell their shares as they wish.
It's cool that Red Hat set aside shares to target people in the community, but let's face it - online investing takes a fair amount of money. If you can't get the $1k there in time (actually, you probably need about $1.5k to participate in the IPO), and if your current personal finances aren't such that you could afford to lose that money, then it might be better that you not participate. Especially if you think that they were "dangling money in front of your face." They were doing no such thing - IPOs are not sure-fire gains. Lots of them are, some of them aren't.
I don't know your situation, of course, but who's going to feel more "burnt" - the student who scrapes together $2k from his college job and loses it all when RHAT tanks (which it might) or the college student with $5k in the bank who is screened out by E*Trade, and is unable to participate?
There *was* mention of this screening process in the offer letter that was sent out. I don't know the details of the process, so I'm not sure how much wealth/experience they're looking for. There's a thread over at www.techstocks.com on this subject... It's a bummer, but I can see both sides of the argument. I wouldn't take it out on Red Hat, though. This has a lot more to do with E*Trade than with Red Hat.
The AOL part of the GAIM logo has been gone for quite a while - this is not a new development. I'm pretty sure, anyway...:-) I'll bet that in general, harrassment of all of the Linux IM clone developers will step up a notch in the coming days, though. *sigh*
Well, I tried to look at the TiK page and it's gone. That doesn't bode well. Granted, the client code may be GPL, but if AOL owns the servers, and they own the protocol, then they can render a GPL client like TiK useless pretty damn fast!
It'd be sweet to see a GPL'd cross platform solution come out of the Free Software community. AbiSource has it right - get your app available for Linux, Mac, BeOS, and Windows, and people just might start using it. I'd love to see the wind taken out of both AOL's and M$'s sails by a GPL'd IM client/server. And when they start putting ads on the proprietary clients (and of course they will - surprised it hasn't started yet...) a free GPL solution will look really attractive. I'd guess that the programming would be relatively trivial, but getting the mindshare would be a bit of work.
How much server horsepower would something like this take, though? I guess that's the problem w/ IM - you need a central server(s) to keep track of who's online?
On to another thought, how long 'til AOL shuts down all the Linux ICQ clients because they don't display advertisements?
This looks pretty cool, but will it help people who are installing Linux for the first time? People are always so scared of the partitioning part... If it's a GTK app, you need X, which means you need Linux, which means you need... an ext2 partition. Is there any way this could be used during the initial install, or is it just for post-install maintenance?
When virus writers moved to an open source model in 1996, there was an explosion in macro viruses, ICSA's Thompson said.
Isn't it actually the other way around? I thought that macros were by definition open source (i.e. not compiled) so variants were easily proliferated. This is different from saying that once "virus hackers" decided to open their souce, people suddenly had new tools to create macro viruses.
You forgot to mention keeping all employees under 40 hours so they don't have to pay 'em any benefits (or so I've heard... I could be completely wrong.)
I can't stand those damn ads with the happy smiling face knocking down numbers. I always envision that happy smiling face shutting down local stores and cracking the whip in a sweatshop.
Anyone with an E*Trade account (for example) has a shot at "getting in before the masses." E*Trade has an IPO center, and you can try to get in on any IPO (It's basically a lottery for the popular IPOs). I'm wondering if the people who were extended this offer from Red Hat have a *better* chance at it than the general public, or if they're in the same boat as everyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
There was an "alert" posted last night at 10:10pm, saying that if it prices outside of the original range of $10-$12, then all conditional offers must be re-submitted. I called this morning before it priced, and asked the rep "If I indicated interest 'at the market' then do I need to re-submit my IOI?" and she said "No, only if you set a price limit." so I relaxed.
Then I saw it price at $14, and I thought "hmm... let's double-check this thing" and I called the IPO support line again - this time the guy said "No, you must re-indicate interest no matter how you indicated the first time - let me get you to a broker." So I waited on hold, nervously, and finally got through. He confirmed my request, I thanked him, and I hung up.
Re-loaded the IPO bulletin page, and it said that all conditional offers were closed.
Damn, that was fast. Remind me *never* to become a day-trader. I'm not cut out for this.
Somewhere I saw a chronological collection of Jesse Berst quotes about Linux - it was pretty funny to see him twist in the wind as Linux gained in popularity and he had to change his tune. Anyone know where that list is?
I want to try the TrueType servers out there... but I can't quite figure out how. There's not a "Font HOWTO" hiding somewhere out there anywhere?
Damn, wish I had $30 grand to gamble on Red Hat. I was thinking... even if it goes up fivefold, I still can't retire. :-)
"Now this?" Um... I'm not certain that an initial price increase is a good thing even for people who got "the letter" - sure, maybe it means that there's more hype, but it also means that even those who got "the letter" have to pay 20% more for each share to take advantage of the offer...
Place of residence - you gotta live in the US. SEC rules.
Affiliations - your mom can't work for Goldman Sachs. That wouldn't be fair, now would it?
And, if you said that capital preservation was your investment style, then of course an IPO is a bad idea.
As far as net worth, etc, goes - I agree. They ask all this and accept / reject before they even know how many shares you're interested in.
However, posting the requirements would be kinda silly. "Your yearly income must be above X" (ok, click "X") "And your liquid assets must be at least "Y" (ok, click "Y")...
The dates, memos, address book, and all that are handy, but the ability to read hypertext documents anywhere has been a great asset.
The offer was basically a chance to get your shares allocated out of a pool where the shares available / persons interested ratio was a lot higher.
There is SO much misunderstanding about this whole issue, it's really, really frustrating. And I'm afraid that it's making a lot of people (Red Hat, E*Trade, hackers, users, Slasdot - you name it) look quite bad.
Isn't E*Trade just:
:-)
1) Following rules and regulations, and
2) Covering their ass?
And, the offer letter included notice that there would be a screening, and a link to a sample eligibility form. If you think about it just a little, and look at the form, you could probably have figured out what it takes to get past the screen.
Class action suit.... geez. Whatever. This is the STOCK MARKET, folks. The rules are a bit different (and stricter) than those a lot of Linux supporters are used to, but it's not a grand conspiracy. It's the Way Things Are(tm), for better or worse. All of this "F**K ETRADE" and "F**CK RED HAT" is spitting in the wind. Might as well say "F**CK THE AMERICAN CAPITALIST SYSTEM" - and perhaps you should.
Well, that, and then there's 30 days of phone support and 90 days of email support - that certainly is worth something.
Regarding hope or lack thereof, I really don't know what RHAT will do in the first 30 days, or in the coming year(s). It'll certainly be interesting. I'm glad to see that the Road Show was packed, because I hadn't seen that much buzz in many of the online investing sites.
Damn, I can't stop replying to this thread...
Well, anyway. Let's try to clear up some more misunderstanding.
Red Hat is having an IPO. They are issuing public shares for the first time. Some people will be able to get in at the initial price (currently estimated at $10-$12 per share) which is set before the stock trades publicly. Often, this price is significantly below the price that the stock will see on the first day of trading. On the first day of trading, anyone and their dog can buy shares by calling their broker or clicking their browser.
You did not need to get "the letter" in order to get in on the initial price. E*Trade customers and customers of other brokerages also have this opportunity. However, Joe Blow E*Trade customer will be competing with thousands of people for an allotment of shares. On E*Trade, it used to be first-come first-served, but now it's a lottery system, with shares allocated in 100-share chunks.
However, Red Hat has set aside 800,000 shares to be "directed" to the open source community. That's what the letter did - it gives you a (possibly) better chance to actually have shares allocated to you out of this pool, rather than the general public pool. It guarantees that up to 8,000 people will be able to purchase at leat 100 shares each. Of course, you must be eligible to participate in the IPO in the first place.
Getting the URL, the phone number, or the password from the letter will not help you out if you didn't actually receive the letter. E*Trade is screening for this - they know who Red Hat sent the letter to originally. If you try, you will most likely be barred from ever participating in any IPO through E*Trade in the future. Them's the breaks.
You were not offered stock. You were offered the chance to apply for participation in this IPO, subject to all the standard rules and regulations of the E*Trade corporation and various governing bodies. What made this offer special is that you are in a smaller pool of applicants, making it more likely that if you are eligible, you may actually receive an allocation. It was stated in the letter that you would be subject to screening based on your financial background and investing experience, and a link was provided so that you could see exactly what this screening would entail.
Oh, and look at that. It seems that all the bitching and whining has had an effect.... E*Trade backed down!
I wouldn't say that they backed down - they gave you a chance to "correct errors" on your screening application. Their ass is still covered.
I've seen a lot of people complaining that they couldn't get things done in time, couldn't find the link, etc. If you're serious about this, and you're having problems, then CALL E*Trade! There were some problems with their web site, etc. The phone support was helpful, and they were able to take care of all the problems I encountered. I ended up talking to a broker rather than using the web site. What a concept. :-)
1) Call them and ask them these questions. If you got the Red Hat letter, call the number listed there. They were very helpful to me.
:-) I wouldn't be surprised if this prices at $14-$15 per share, sold in 100 share lots. And I assume that there's a fee for the transaction, as well.
2) You should have had more than a week... the Red Hat letter was dated 7/20, and you have until August 4 to have a funded account and make your indication of interest. Do this from the URL that was mentioned in the letter. If you didn't get the letter, don't cheat, because E*Trade will block you from ever participating in any IPO with them again.
3) You can probably fax in your application and wire the necessary funds to speed things up and avoid the USPS.
4) $1000 isn't gonna get you jack.
Now - if you were screened out the first time due to financial background or trading experience, I don't want to hear a single complaint about how you lost your money on this investment. Kapisch?! :) (Of course, I hope no one loses... but I really don't know how this thing will go!)
Well, damn, I don't mean to sound harsh, but if you had to beg, borrow, and steal to get your $1500 (which actually may not even cover it, if they re-price above $15) then why are you even considering this investment?
Oh great... Something else to beat up on Red Hat for. Not only are they too commercial and ready to become the next micros~1 of Linux, they also steal candy from babies and fool poor coders into thinking they'll become millionaires. (/sarcasm off)
There are financial realities at work here, folks. Not everyone will be able to participate. Red Hat certainly didn't know who would and would not have the necessary funds and experience to participate. They sent out the letter to a ton of people, which was a generous thing to do. Those who can take advantage of it will. Unfortunately, the Nasdaq is not free as in speech and it is not free as in beer, and some people will be left out. There's nothing that Red Hat can do about that.
It's unfortunate that you're feeling burnt by this, but I really think that it is out of Red Hat's control. E*Trade is one of the underwriters (I think that's the right term...) for this IPO, and they can sell their shares as they wish.
It's cool that Red Hat set aside shares to target people in the community, but let's face it - online investing takes a fair amount of money. If you can't get the $1k there in time (actually, you probably need about $1.5k to participate in the IPO), and if your current personal finances aren't such that you could afford to lose that money, then it might be better that you not participate.
Especially if you think that they were "dangling money in front of your face." They were doing no such thing - IPOs are not sure-fire gains. Lots of them are, some of them aren't.
I don't know your situation, of course, but who's going to feel more "burnt" - the student who scrapes together $2k from his college job and loses it all when RHAT tanks (which it might) or the college student with $5k in the bank who is screened out by E*Trade, and is unable to participate?
There *was* mention of this screening process in the offer letter that was sent out. I don't know the details of the process, so I'm not sure how much wealth/experience they're looking for. There's a thread over at www.techstocks.com on this subject... It's a bummer, but I can see both sides of the argument. I wouldn't take it out on Red Hat, though. This has a lot more to do with E*Trade than with Red Hat.
The AOL part of the GAIM logo has been gone for quite a while - this is not a new development. I'm pretty sure, anyway... :-) I'll bet that in general, harrassment of all of the Linux IM clone developers will step up a notch in the coming days, though. *sigh*
Well, I tried to look at the TiK page and it's gone. That doesn't bode well. Granted, the client code may be GPL, but if AOL owns the servers, and they own the protocol, then they can render a GPL client like TiK useless pretty damn fast!
It'd be sweet to see a GPL'd cross platform solution come out of the Free Software community. AbiSource has it right - get your app available for Linux, Mac, BeOS, and Windows, and people just might start using it. I'd love to see the wind taken out of both AOL's and M$'s sails by a GPL'd IM client/server. And when they start putting ads on the proprietary clients (and of course they will - surprised it hasn't started yet...) a free GPL solution will look really attractive. I'd guess that the programming would be relatively trivial, but getting the mindshare would be a bit of work.
How much server horsepower would something like this take, though? I guess that's the problem w/ IM - you need a central server(s) to keep track of who's online?
On to another thought, how long 'til AOL shuts down all the Linux ICQ clients because they don't display advertisements?
This looks pretty cool, but will it help people who are installing Linux for the first time? People are always so scared of the partitioning part... If it's a GTK app, you need X, which means you need Linux, which means you need... an ext2 partition. Is there any way this could be used during the initial install, or is it just for post-install maintenance?
Isn't it actually the other way around? I thought that macros were by definition open source (i.e. not compiled) so variants were easily proliferated. This is different from saying that once "virus hackers" decided to open their souce, people suddenly had new tools to create macro viruses.
p.s. damn, I was gonna use that sig! :)
You forgot to mention keeping all employees under 40 hours so they don't have to pay 'em any benefits (or so I've heard... I could be completely wrong.)
I can't stand those damn ads with the happy smiling face knocking down numbers. I always envision that happy smiling face shutting down local stores and cracking the whip in a sweatshop.
Anyone with an E*Trade account (for example) has a shot at "getting in before the masses." E*Trade has an IPO center, and you can try to get in on any IPO (It's basically a lottery for the popular IPOs). I'm wondering if the people who were extended this offer from Red Hat have a *better* chance at it than the general public, or if they're in the same boat as everyone else.