PC Week: IPOs pose challenge to Linux Community Aug 6, 1999, 21 :50 UTC (3 Talkback[s]) (3633 reads) (Other stories by Scott Berinato)
"Ready or not, here come the Linux IPOs, portending a
shift in the high-tech landscape that almost certainly
will widen the crevasse between the community-minded
Linux developers and the bottom-line bean counters.
First out of the gate among Linux vendors making initial
public offerings will be Red Hat Software Inc., which is
likely to offer 6 million shares of stock as early as next
week, sources close to the company said."
"Others expected to follow include hardware maker VA
Linux Systems Inc., which hopes to file papers this fall,
and operating system distributors TurboLinux Inc. and
Caldera Systems Inc."
"Although the Linux operating system kernel will remain
open, developers are not required to give away Linux
appli-cation code. As a result, publicly traded Linux
vendors could be under intense pressure from
shareholders to distin-guish themselves from the
competition by creating and selling proprietary Linux
applications."
