On Tue, May 15, 2007 10:53 am, Bob La Quey wrote: > On 5/15/07, Lan Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> On Tue, May 15, 2007 7:55 am, Bob La Quey wrote: >> >> > Now an interesting play would be to buy Red Hat. Don't know exactly >> > what they would do with it, but the could buy it. RHT has a market >> > cap of around $4 Billion. Twice that would be hard for the >> institutions >> > that hold the vast majority of RHT stock to resist. Not hard for M$ to >> > do a deal like this (well the monopoly issues are the likely deal >> stopper, >> > but there are no financial barriers.) >> > >> >> That is an interesting idea, but I can't see it working long term. >> Because >> of open source being Free, Red Hat is a brand name and not much more. >> The >> PHBs equate RH with business Linux, but if M$ bought it, it would be to >> retire it (like FoxBase before it). And the former RHEL development team >> and the Fedora Core team(s) could walk across the street WITH LEGAL >> COPIES >> OF THEIR LATEST SOURCE and set themselves up in business that day. > > I suspect anothe billion dollars thrown their way together with > "not compete" agreements as part of the buy out might well > slow that up. A M$ offer of $1 to $100 Million to individual programmers > might well test their morals. >
OK, WE can do it. Or some guys in India. If M$ buys/kills Red Hat, there will be an empty nich in the environment, and no technical or legal obstacles to its being filled; thanks, yet again, to the GPL. >> They could even call themselves "New Hat." > > I like "Old Hat" better :) They could produce a unix for Stewart. > ... or "Bob, Stew, and Lan's Hat." -- Lan Barnes SCM Analyst Linux Guy Tcl/Tk Enthusiast Biodiesel Brewer -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
