Red Hat IPO

Mr P.A. Van Heusden pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk
Fri Aug 13 02:40:27 PDT 1999


On Thu, 12 Aug 1999, Doug Henwood wrote:


> So what do you Linux fans out there make of Red Hat going public? How
> can you make money distributing free, open source software? Is it one
> of the final acts of the dot.com mania that anyone would buy the
> stock?

The distribution isn't for free - you have to buy Linux CD's from Red Hat, and as I understand it, above plain 'cost of copying the CD' (or else how does CheapBytes undercut them?).

RedHat has profession software developers working on Linux, so that Linux keeps an edge, and they keep a competitive product.

I still think they're going to get out-competed by M'soft in the end, though.

Peter -- Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available 'The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions.' - Karl Marx



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