“In fact, its IPO filing shows that it really expects to
make its money as a portal.”
“How do you earn a living from a product that’s free? That
dilemma faces each of the dozens of startups that are trying to
profit from the open-source operating system called Linux. The
first of them to announce plans to go public, Red Hat, says it
expects to establish market dominance — and then morph into an
Internet portal.
“Red Hat’s initial public offering may become one of the stock
market’s biggest events of the year, thanks mainly to enormous
interest from the press and public about Linux.”