“…Red Hat’s S-1 filing — the document any wannabe public
company is required to file with the SEC — does make for some
interesting reading.”
“Then there are the required “risk factors” — the list of
potential disasters that could derail future Red Hat profitability.
S-1 risk factors tend to err on the side of absurd overstatement
(world famine, alien invasion). But the risk factors assembled by
Red Hat constitute a pretty compelling analysis of weaknesses in
the open-source business model.”
“But the mere fact that there is now an official SEC document
that includes the text of the GPL serves as fairly astonishing
proof that the rules of the software business really are being
rewritten.”