“As Red Hat prepares to go public, one Linux hacker’s dreams of
IPO glory are crushed by The Man.”
“At first I thought it was spam. It was probably the hundredth
message I had received that day, and I was inclined to consign it
straight to my personal spam graveyard. But it was titled ‘A
personal invitation from Red Hat’ and in my world, Red Hat — one
of the leading distributors of the Linux-based operating system —
is a big name. So I took a look. And I got excited. On close
examination, the e-mail seemed minted of pure gold — it was a
special invitation to participate in Red Hat’s imminent initial
public offering.”
“This is the story of how that gold turned to lead for about 400
software developers passionately devoted to Red Hat Inc. — a story
from the front lines of a battle between the idealistic world of
open source and the real world forces who run this country.”