“In an email to members of the open source community
Tuesday, Red Hat, a distributor of the Linux operating system,
offered developers first crack at its pre-IPO shares.
Investors could potentially make a handsome profit by selling those
shares after the stock starts trading.
“Red Hat couldn’t have grown this far without the ongoing help
and support of the open source community,” CEO Robert Young said in
the email. “Therefore, we have reserved a portion of the stock in
our offering for distribution online to certain members of the open
source community.”