“LINUX. LINUX. LINUX. Linux. Chant the word enough times –
or at least release enough press releases with the word in it – and
watch your stock price rise.“
“It’s magic. Company after company has associated itself,
somehow or other, with the popular open-source operating system
begun by Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds, a practice that is
often followed by a big – if short-lived – upward stock move for
the announcing company.”
“Many companies have felt especially compelled to disclose their
Linux news since the raucous debut of VA Linux (LNUX). In the eight
days following that Linux-services firm’s Dec. 9 IPO, about 400
press releases with mentions of Linux found their way onto the
public relations newswires that feed into Dow Jones News Retrieval.
No wonder one publicist we interviewed referred to the process as
“Linux spamming.”