“Quite a fair bit of emotion has been spilled recently over the
stock market. Microsoft, for instance, has gone down by nearly half
its value — from about $120 to under $70. This is only one small
example of the overall decline in the amount of imaginary money
that software companies have commanded. To them, this is a serious
problem. Most commercial companies rely on their stock price to
drive perceptions of their success in the market. Stock options in
some way drive a very large number of decisions that commercial
software companies make, from product announcements to company
buyouts to any number of other small things.”
“Stock price has in recent years been a primary motivating
factor behind too much of the industry. It’s an unhealthy obsession
that causes developers and companies to focus on the acquisition of
greater and greater amounts of wealth — playing the “Stock Game”
rather than actually trying to do something as revolutionary as
create quality software.”
“Even Linux companies haven’t been totally immune. Obsession
over stock price has, despite pragmatic caution on the part of
Linux developers and users, still reached a somewhat irrational
pitch among some people.“