Stock Market...

[Warren Togami]

Red Hat's stock price does not accurately reflect their market position.
Their stock price is entirely the result of market PERCEPTION and not
revenues, as their revenues have steadily increased and beat market
projections, at the same time the market lost more and more confidence and
sold off all tech stocks, not just theirs.  In the last fiscal quarter Red
Hat actually broke even (after one-time adjustments from acquisitions, etc.)
They also have plenty in the blank... if I recall correctly it was $200
million.  Keep in mind that that is without ANY burn-rate.  Their next
fiscal quarter I predict they will lose a few cents per share, but they are
in no danger of going out of business.

Red Hat, Mandrake, and theKompany are actually proven and profitable
businesses.  Thankfully.

However, I am deeply worried about VA Linux, Caldera, Ximian and Loki
Software.  All four companies are incredibly important players in the open
source community..

VA Linux - Sourceforge
Caldera - Smooth migration path from SCO Unix.  Caldera is now the world's
largest Unix company in revenue.
Ximian - Gnome, Evolution, Red Carpet
Loki Software - Not the games, but the open source libraries that they
developed are VERY important to the community.

Other players like Eazel and Corel have made incredible contributions too,
but they have already failed.

----- Original Message -----
From: <epsas at inflicted.net>
To: "Linux & Unix Advocates & Users" <luau at list.luau.hi.net>
Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2001 10:16 AM
Subject: [luau] Stock Market...


> It seems that a few community businesses are close to going out of
business.  What does this mean for the Open Source business model?  Should
the community look to conventional businesses for employment instead of
clamouring to get a position at the next Linux software company?  I don't
know, but it's all a bit scary, I guess....
>
> VA Linux
> http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=LNUX&d=c
>
> Redhat
> http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=RHAT&d=c&k=c1&t=1y&a=v&p=s&l=on&z=m&q=l
>
> Caldera
> http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=cald&d=c&k=c4
>
>