With Red Hat and VA Research leading the charge toward the first
Linux IPO, it seems that there should be a way for those who have
invested so much of their time in the Free Software movement to
invest financially as well.
The biggest winners in Linux start-up investing will be the
‘Angel’ investors who saw and commited to the opportunity well
before the initial public offering.
In the past year, we have seen significant Angel investments in
Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera, VA Research, LinuxCare and others.
These ‘Angels’, nevertheless, generally had, at a minimum,
hundreds of thousands to invest and did so with the active
participation of one or more venture capital companies to build a
still larger pool of capital.
This process has effectively left out those with only hundreds
or thousands to invest until the IPO — and by then the potential
multiple for profit will be significantly smaller.
We often hear the more successful Linux-related companies talk
about how their aim is for ‘all boats in the harbor to rise’.
But the reality may well be that, as a tital wave of big money
floods in on Linux, the aspirations of individuals to provide
themselves well-being from their years-long labor of love will be
capsized.
Community has built Free Software and only community will keep
it building. Companies which are poised to profit the most from the
Free Software community ought to open up early investment
opportunities for members of the community with limited means.
One way of accomplishing this would be with the creation of an
investment fund open to individuals with limited means and with the
specific mission of investing in Free Software and Linux
companies.
To be a success, such a fund would have to have the right
organization and management.
It seems unlikely that anything short of the backing of the
best-established profit-making organizations within the Free
Software movement such as Linux International, Red Hat, Caldera,
SuSE, and VA Research could create such a fund.
Without a mechanism such as this to enable everyone to
participate in the prosperity created by the success of Free
Software, Free Software can never reach its true potential.
Dwight Johnson has been a computer professional
since 1967 and is one of the founders of Linux
Today.