[LUAU] VC and Linux

[Hawaii Linux Institute]

Karen Lofstrom wrote:

>My ex-husband was Verifone employee #25. Joined up when they were still a
>smallish company operating out of the First Insurance building
>kitty-korner from the Art Academy. Then they moved out to Mililani Hi-Tech
>Park and finally to the Bay Area.
>

I am sure most have heard the news that Google has set a date to go 
IPO.  What differentiates Google from essentially all the internet 
bubbles of the late '90s is that it already has almost $500M in cash.  I 
know Google is "probably" profitable.  But $500M in cash?  I don't think 
anyone has any idea that Google has been so successful, cash-wise.

Five years ago, Google comprised of no more than two PhD students, one 
of them from the former USSR, who built a search engine on a number of 
cheap-to-free Linux boxes.

Plse excuse me for doing a little bit Monday morning quarterbacking.  
But I believe all the financial analysts have missed a key element in 
Google's success.  As I mentioned in my previous thread, before the two 
Google founders thought about their ideas, there was already a massive 
Linux community at Stanford University's ComSci dept.

This is what we should do: Build a massive Linux user community in 
Hawaii.  And hopefully some of us will become very big (so that the rest 
of us can have enough crumbs to pick).  We may not have the technical 
edge, but we should have some geographical/geopolltical/geosocial 
advantages that make us unique among the 50 states.  wayne