On Sat, 12 Feb 2000, cba2 wrote:
> David, your right...
>
> Darn, I forgot. Let me get that bag of money I left under the bed for just
> such occasions.
[lots of stuff about Palm dumping on us, the developers, by not offering
us shares at IPO price and suggesting we buy Palm or 3Com shares on the
open market]
I am a Linux developer and a PalmOS developer (both in my spare time - I'm
a Unix developer during working hours), so I think I understand both sides
of this.
What it comes down to is very simple. RedHat, Caldera and (to a somewhat
lesser extent) VALinux make almost all their money from re-distributing
software which they did not write, and which they did not pay any
licensing fees for. Developers like me (only better :-) wrote software,
and gave it away without (in most cases) any though of personal monetary
gain. RedHat et al. took that software, integrated it into a complete
operating system environment, and sold it. When the companies found they
had a chance to 'pay' those developers who had contributed their work,
they did so.
I think that anyone whose software has been included in a *shipping* Palm
Computing Platform product, and who has received *no* licensing fees
whatsoever for their software, deserves to be in at the IPO. I didn't get
any RedHat (or other shares) because none of my software is on any of
their CDs. As far as I know, all the software shipped by Palm (and
licensees for that matter, although that is a different matter) is either
owned and written by them, or has had licensing fees paid. That's the
difference.
I write GPLed software for PalmOS. That means that Palm would be quite
within their rights (and very welcome) to take my software, package it up,
and include it on a CD (or even in ROM) in future products. Then, maybe,
I would expect some IPO action. When you sell (or in many cases, give
away) your software in an open market, you have no relationship with Palm
(except for *excellent Developer support :-) which suggests they should
allow you special IPO rights.
I didn't want to write this e-mail, but I've seen too many *wrong*
assumptions about the RedHat et al. IPOs compared with the Palm IPO to
keep quiet any longer. I suspect (and I apologise if I'm worng) that most
or all of the developers who are complaining are Windows or MacOS users
and therefore may not fully understand the situation and the background of
the Linux IPOs. I see a clear difference, which fully explains Palms
actions and David (and others) comments on this forum.
If you do want to continue this discussion, please let us take it
elsewhere. Please contact me if you do want to, and I'll look for (or set
up, if necessary) a more appropriate venue for the discussion, and post a
summary back to this list at a later date (in grand old Usenet style).
Cheers
Richard
P.S. I use () too much, don't I?
--
For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see
http://www.palm.com/devzone/mailinglists.html
