I sold my 1000 shares of RedHat stock today for $12.50/share...a tidy profit from the $4.50 buy-in about a year ago.
From everything I read and from my own gut reaction to RedHat's new business model, I think that there is going to be a big wake-up call over the next few quarters as RedHat finds it may have sold into a few Fortune 500 companies, but lost the rest of the world. I just don't see how that is viable. As all the stock valuation basics say that RedHat is vastly overpriced now, and my feeling is that there will only be bad news from them in the future, it is time to get out.
I then sent a letter to RedHat. I explained why I sold my stock. I also explained that I was right in the middle of the bell curve of their previous business model. I bought a boxed set ever 12-18 months and I bought a subscription for support updates. I explained that I supported their work and felt they had nailed the value of their development, support, and updates on the head before and that I felt that they were entitled to a reasonable profit from it. However, the new pricing and subscription model is usurious. I believe it will drive away the people who use RedHat distributions on their own and who have been instrumental to bringing it into business, government, and education; moving to other distributions with now much more reasonable pricing and support models.
It isn't like RedHat has a monopoly. I think that they will find that out real soon.
So, I'm on to SuSE for now. My RedHat investment has been liquidated, both on my desktop, my servers, and in my portfolio.
Tim Berners-Lee seems to think that his name, the mighty weight of the name of his organization (W3C), and his oh-so-rational argument will cause the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, James E. Rogan, to simply agree and toss the patent. That isn't this man's job. The process for challenging a patent isn't some sort of "who you know or who you are" sort of thing, it is a very well defined process. If Tim was smart enough to research all of this prior art and present an argument for why this patent is invalid (seems to hinge more on the economic impact of Microsoft changing their browser and not choosing to license the technology from Eolas rather than a procedural error on the part of the USPTO), why couldn't Tim figure out the proper way to file this challenge? Amazing.
The one thing that I haven't read about is of any dialog actually taking place between the impacted parties (MS, Opera, Mozilla, Real, etc.) and Eolas.
Wouldn't it be reasonable to see what terms Eolas sets to license their patent first before making any drastic changes or getting too upset?
There have been conflicting reports whether Eolas would license this patent to Microsoft or not. The most recent reports indicates that they would. So, for Microsoft to change the landscape of their browser without first having had this dialog indicates other motivating factors behind the change (and yes, I have never trusted those goddamned ActiveX controls running on my system without my knowledge or permission - so this is actually a good thing).
I would expect Eolas to act in a business-like and reasonable manner towards any licensing discussion. And I would expect that non-commercial open source efforts to be able to obtain such a license for the asking. It simply doesn't make sense for Eolas to hoard this technology and force its abandonment by the world.
Look at software patent licensing as one would a biological virus - those that kill the host will not be successful. The goal should be for everyone to survive and do business as usual.
Whether I personally dislike software patents, or whether you do, is largely immaterial. They are a fact of life in the business world today and, like taxes, we have to live with them, unfortunately.
Most universities and large business sift through the fruits of their employees' work and look for intellectual property that can be patented and possibly licensed or traded like any other property of real value. It helps them cover their investment (capitalism, and all that stuff). Heck, I found out a couple of months ago that I am the holder of two patents that had been filed by an old, old employer. You can be a patent holder and not even know it. Most of us sign something when hired by a company assigning the company exclusive license to intellectual property developed there in the course of one's work.
Having actually done some research on this Eolas patent and how it relates to the Microsoft judgement, I found out some interesting stuff that should be considered before we all condemn this in a knee-jerk response to the infringement this places on our freedom to develop software.
A few guys were working at the University of California and developed a plugin technology with the old NSCA Mosaic browser that allowed a server to ship executable content down the line along with the HTML and then have the browser do things it couldn't do before. Routinely, a patent application was filed by their employer on this work. The guys who did the work thought that this was neat technology and worked a deal with the University that they could try to maybe get this technology out into the wider world, and so, as there was a patent filed on it already, they worked an exclusive licensing agreement with the University.
So these guys form a company and start making calls on the big players in the Internet technology world at the time. They visit Microsoft, demonstrate this plug-in technology and the cool things that it would allow a browser to do, and received a big yawn and sent on their way with a "don't call us, we'll call you" sort of brush-off. They call on a number of other Silicon Valley companies, but these guys aren't businessmen, they're academics. They don't know how the commercial IP game is played. The end result is a lot of people in a lot of companies was this technology and took a pass on licensing it into their own products (which most probably would have been very, very cheap to do back then).
Time passes. These same companies start enhancing browsers with their own plug-in technologies for executable content. No action is taken initially by these guys. Finally, Microsoft starts to dominate Netscape. Attempts are made to reopen discussions by these guys and are rebuffed. These guys start involving lawyers to try to get Microsoft's attention. These attempts are rebuffed too. Finally, they file suit against Microsoft for patent infringement. Many years pass as Microsoft makes motion after motion in hearing after hearing to have the suit dismissed and each time, fails. But they achieve one of their goals which is to delay the proceedings significantly. Meanwhile, the Internet bubble comes and goes. There are many products that now do this plug-in sort of thing. The idea becomes obvious because everyone sees it going on around them in other products. Finally, the patent infringment suit against Microsoft goes to trial. After many weeks of trial in which mountains of evidence are presented by Microsoft, twelve regular joes on the jury aren't convinced that there was (1) prior art or prior effort on Microsoft's part, (2) lack of knowledge by Microsoft about the invention or patent (2) or an invalid patent granted to the University of California.
The Federal jury trial found for Eolas and against Microsoft on all counts. Apparently the evidence was so strong that jury deliberations took just one day. You can say what you want about jury trials, but having seen what judges have done, or not done, when the decision is theirs alone [when Microsoft was found gui
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I sold my 1000 shares of RedHat stock today for $12.50/share...a tidy profit from the $4.50 buy-in about a year ago.
From everything I read and from my own gut reaction to RedHat's new business model, I think that there is going to be a big wake-up call over the next few quarters as RedHat finds it may have sold into a few Fortune 500 companies, but lost the rest of the world. I just don't see how that is viable. As all the stock valuation basics say that RedHat is vastly overpriced now, and my feeling is that there will only be bad news from them in the future, it is time to get out.
I then sent a letter to RedHat. I explained why I sold my stock. I also explained that I was right in the middle of the bell curve of their previous business model. I bought a boxed set ever 12-18 months and I bought a subscription for support updates. I explained that I supported their work and felt they had nailed the value of their development, support, and updates on the head before and that I felt that they were entitled to a reasonable profit from it. However, the new pricing and subscription model is usurious. I believe it will drive away the people who use RedHat distributions on their own and who have been instrumental to bringing it into business, government, and education; moving to other distributions with now much more reasonable pricing and support models.
It isn't like RedHat has a monopoly. I think that they will find that out real soon.
So, I'm on to SuSE for now. My RedHat investment has been liquidated, both on my desktop, my servers, and in my portfolio.
Tim Berners-Lee seems to think that his name, the mighty weight of the name of his organization (W3C), and his oh-so-rational argument will cause the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, James E. Rogan, to simply agree and toss the patent. That isn't this man's job. The process for challenging a patent isn't some sort of "who you know or who you are" sort of thing, it is a very well defined process. If Tim was smart enough to research all of this prior art and present an argument for why this patent is invalid (seems to hinge more on the economic impact of Microsoft changing their browser and not choosing to license the technology from Eolas rather than a procedural error on the part of the USPTO), why couldn't Tim figure out the proper way to file this challenge? Amazing.
The one thing that I haven't read about is of any dialog actually taking place between the impacted parties (MS, Opera, Mozilla, Real, etc.) and Eolas.
Wouldn't it be reasonable to see what terms Eolas sets to license their patent first before making any drastic changes or getting too upset?
There have been conflicting reports whether Eolas would license this patent to Microsoft or not. The most recent reports indicates that they would. So, for Microsoft to change the landscape of their browser without first having had this dialog indicates other motivating factors behind the change (and yes, I have never trusted those goddamned ActiveX controls running on my system without my knowledge or permission - so this is actually a good thing).
I would expect Eolas to act in a business-like and reasonable manner towards any licensing discussion. And I would expect that non-commercial open source efforts to be able to obtain such a license for the asking. It simply doesn't make sense for Eolas to hoard this technology and force its abandonment by the world.
Look at software patent licensing as one would a biological virus - those that kill the host will not be successful. The goal should be for everyone to survive and do business as usual.
Most universities and large business sift through the fruits of their employees' work and look for intellectual property that can be patented and possibly licensed or traded like any other property of real value. It helps them cover their investment (capitalism, and all that stuff). Heck, I found out a couple of months ago that I am the holder of two patents that had been filed by an old, old employer. You can be a patent holder and not even know it. Most of us sign something when hired by a company assigning the company exclusive license to intellectual property developed there in the course of one's work.
Having actually done some research on this Eolas patent and how it relates to the Microsoft judgement, I found out some interesting stuff that should be considered before we all condemn this in a knee-jerk response to the infringement this places on our freedom to develop software.
A few guys were working at the University of California and developed a plugin technology with the old NSCA Mosaic browser that allowed a server to ship executable content down the line along with the HTML and then have the browser do things it couldn't do before. Routinely, a patent application was filed by their employer on this work. The guys who did the work thought that this was neat technology and worked a deal with the University that they could try to maybe get this technology out into the wider world, and so, as there was a patent filed on it already, they worked an exclusive licensing agreement with the University.
So these guys form a company and start making calls on the big players in the Internet technology world at the time. They visit Microsoft, demonstrate this plug-in technology and the cool things that it would allow a browser to do, and received a big yawn and sent on their way with a "don't call us, we'll call you" sort of brush-off. They call on a number of other Silicon Valley companies, but these guys aren't businessmen, they're academics. They don't know how the commercial IP game is played. The end result is a lot of people in a lot of companies was this technology and took a pass on licensing it into their own products (which most probably would have been very, very cheap to do back then).
Time passes. These same companies start enhancing browsers with their own plug-in technologies for executable content. No action is taken initially by these guys. Finally, Microsoft starts to dominate Netscape. Attempts are made to reopen discussions by these guys and are rebuffed. These guys start involving lawyers to try to get Microsoft's attention. These attempts are rebuffed too. Finally, they file suit against Microsoft for patent infringement. Many years pass as Microsoft makes motion after motion in hearing after hearing to have the suit dismissed and each time, fails. But they achieve one of their goals which is to delay the proceedings significantly. Meanwhile, the Internet bubble comes and goes. There are many products that now do this plug-in sort of thing. The idea becomes obvious because everyone sees it going on around them in other products. Finally, the patent infringment suit against Microsoft goes to trial. After many weeks of trial in which mountains of evidence are presented by Microsoft, twelve regular joes on the jury aren't convinced that there was (1) prior art or prior effort on Microsoft's part, (2) lack of knowledge by Microsoft about the invention or patent (2) or an invalid patent granted to the University of California.
The Federal jury trial found for Eolas and against Microsoft on all counts. Apparently the evidence was so strong that jury deliberations took just one day. You can say what you want about jury trials, but having seen what judges have done, or not done, when the decision is theirs alone [when Microsoft was found gui