“Red Hat’s stock more than tripled in its first day of
public trading–but for a second time, the company’s goodwill
effort to include the Linux community went sour.
Weeks ago, Red Hat sent out an invitation to participate in the
initial public offering to hundreds of programmers and others who
had helped the Linux effort. But a change yesterday in the expected
price range of the offering left many scrambling with E*Trade today
to reconfirm that they wanted to participate.
The hurdles today were a sequel to a problem two weeks ago when
many found themselves unable to participate, because they didn’t
meet requirements for minimum net worth. The wrinkles undermined a
goodwill effort on Red Hat’s part to offer 800,000 shares to the
members of the open source community who had helped to develop
Linux.”