Re[4]: Why
"Paul McHale" <pmchale@doubleesolutions.com> wrote:
> You may be right, but I hope you are wrong. I think old Linus himself would
> get involved over that.
Yes, but how? Probably the most anticipated announcement in years will be the
one he'll make - when? January? - about Transmeta's plans for its future.
Venture capitalists by the droves are scurrying around the country. I'm sure
they've called on Mr. Torvalds.
> Most of what Linux stock is riding on is hype. Redhat made nowhere near
> enough money to justify stock.
Redhat *made* money? I don't think so. But I see you are operating on the
"old" paradigm: you want share prices to reflect past earnings. But the idea
of betting on earnings that are still two, three, five or ten years out is not
new. It's just that we haven't seen a goldrush for new technology like this
since they electrified the street railways and lamp posts!
> If Linus and co puts the poo poo on Corel, it will kill the stock of
> Corel. I don't think anyone, even Redhat, is in any position to undermine
> the GPL.
Corel needs be very very careful of its image right now, agreed. But at some
point someone will take an extremely calculated risk and fork off a
distribution and attempt to rewrite the license. Guaranteed.
> > Corel doesn't give a farthing for Debian itself, the project and
> > it goals.
> From a stock holders view, your correct.
Not just from their pov. What has Corel given back in return for the 300% bump
in its market capitalization just since Comdex and the release of Corel Linux?
Where's the quid pro quo? Ask the kde developers what they gave them back.
Debian lent its good name and well deserved reputation for quality (and by
association, GNU's good name and reputation) to Corel and they took it to the
bank and never looked back.
Then we have an extremely odd event in which Bruce Perens announces to the
world (on debian-legal) that he has a conflict of interest (as far as
continuing to represent Debian in its dealings with Corel) due to his being a
minority owner of a venture capital group that may itself underwrite a product
that would compete with Corel's! This little bomb got dropped and no one said
boo. Were they stunned into silence or did they just hope that if it was
ignored maybe Bruce would finally just put on a lid on his public statements
for awhile?
> But everyone realizes Linux works because it is a volunteer effort.
Those were the good old days. They're gone. Besides Debian name me one Linux
distribution that is maintained by only volunteers? That isn't in some sense
now in it for the money?
> You want a nightmare. Here's one. Microsoft buying Corel. That's a
> nightmare.
The rumor this past week was that RedHat was looking to buy Corel. And trading
of Corel reflected it that day, with a huge number of shares changing hands.
It didn't make sense to me, but what do I know? <g>
We live in interesting times...
--
Bob Bernstein http://members.home.net/ruptured-duck
at
Esmond, R.I., USA ruptured-duck@home.com
"RMS's "curmudgeon-like" griping that he didn't like the term "Open
Source" looked silly to many last year; it's not looking so dumb
today..." Christopher B. Browne
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