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Caldera

Caldera Prices Its IPO 129

Posted by Hemos from the release-the-funds dept.
A reader writes, "Caldera has priced its IPO. See here in Wideopen for what little there is to read about it. " Summary: $7-9 expected range of price, while selling 5 million shares. Update: 02/26 01:31 by R : Slightly deeper story at News.com.
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Caldera Prices Its IPO More

Caldera Prices Its IPO

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  • So that means it'll open to the public at what... $30? I'd really like to purchase some of this, but I don't really see it happening (not by fault of them, but by my own. Same reason I don't own any RedHat or VA).

    Well, Just realized that my first sentence was the only relevant thought I had on the matter, so, I'll just take this time to congratulate them, and wish them a very well IPO.

  • Sorry, My dad is actually running it on his old packard bell, was too excited about being a 1st post to finish.
    Hopefully this will bring in some nice cash for Caldera, to work on making a great distro for people such as my dad, who wants to run linux, but is still a little intimidated by the debian install process.
  • This is noting compared to linux-pets.com's expected price.
  • For a more in-depth look at the IPO, click here [ipo.com] for IPO.com's filing.

  • I don't know you guys, but when I look the icon created for Caldera, it reminds me much more of Disney than Caldera...

    Look, the blue part catches my attention immediately, and it looks so much like Mickey's ear. =)

    (This must be the result of working saturday mornings... my brain does not work properly in this period.)


    --
    Marcelo Vanzin
  • Have you checked the stock prices on Linux stocks lately? Sure, a lot of people who got in quick made a great buck, but anybody who bought after the first month is really getting clobbered.

    RedHat - opened at $7, rocketed to $151, now $68.
    VA Linux - opened at $30, rocketed to $320, now at $113.
    Cobalt - opened at $22, rocketed to $172, now $104.

    This sends a message to Wall Street - get in fast on Linux IPO's, and then dump them on the unwitting public. It also sends a subliminal message about Linux as a whole - that it's not a long-term option, only a short-term one. (I'm not saying I agree, but that's the subliminal message.)
  • I thought it was an amusing cross between Corel and Disney the first time I saw it, as if Mickey is leaning over into the C in Corel.

  • Re:The rise and fall of the Linux IPO (Score:3)

    by mangu ( 126918 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @04:12AM (#1244722)
    Actually, RedHat reached a peak of $300. I think the prices you mention are averages. And the actual price for the public at the opening was around $45. But, anyway, buying at $45 and selling less than a year later for $68 is not so bad.

    In the end it boils down to dividends. You can't live on buying low and selling high, in the long run you'll take losses as well as gains. These huge initial gains and later losses are typical of all hi-tech papers, Yahoo and Amazon have similar price histories. But if those companies keep year after year of steady losses and no dividends there's no way their prices will ever go up again.

  • Re:The rise and fall of the Linux IPO (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Red Hat went up to over $300/share, dropped to around $280/share, then split. The $68/share value is for a split stock. If you want to get an unsplit value, it's actually $136/share.

    VA is hovering around $120/share. By hovering, I mean it's stabilized. Stabilizing at a value that high is not a bad thing. People who got in on the IPO are still $90/share ahead at that price.

    Cobalt? To be honest, of all the Linux stocks I'd have to say I'm least interested in Cobalt. I'm glad they're doing well, but I think their business is a big yawn. I think devices like Qubes and Raqs are fads (especially Qubes), and tiny embedded systems are actually the wave of the future. I hope Cobalt does well before this market hits, though. It's just now getting a lot of attention, so...

  • Split adjusted! (Score:3)

    by cyberdonny ( 46462 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @04:46AM (#1244727)
    > Actually, RedHat reached a peak of $300. I think the prices you mention are averages.

    Nope. Brento's prices are adjusted for the split that happened in early January. Those $45 were before the split and would be $22.5 split adjusted. Thus, even at today's pricing, that's still the triple!

    > In the end it boils down to dividends...But if those companies keep year after year of steady losses and no dividends there's no way their prices will ever go up again.

    Actually, not quite true either. There is one (in)famous company which never paid any dividends, but nevertheless gained value year after year. Yes, it is indeed that company that we all love to hate...

  • > Cobalt? To be honest, of all the Linux stocks I'd have to say I'm least interested in Cobalt. I'm glad they're doing well, but I think their business is a big yawn.

    Cobalt is a great daytrading stock. I bought some end of January for 75 1/16, left for a skying holiday, and back home, I sold them for 120 1/8 ;-). Right now, it occasionnally drops back to 100 only to come back to 120 the day after. Great ride!

  • As you say, if you got in quick you made a great buck. Those who bought for the long term play still have time to do so.

    I sure everyone here believes in the long term viability of these companies.
  • Two corrections:

    1. VA Linux priced at $30, but started trading at $300. It hit an intra-day high of $320 on its first day of trading.
    2. RedHat split 2:1 on Jan. 10. It's actual peak was around $300 in early December. In addition, as late as November (it IPO'ed in August (?)), it was trading for less than $50 (split-adjusted).

      You can see all of the details at: Yahoo! [yahoo.com].

  • Caldera's Revenue is Flat, Not a Good Sign (Score:3)

    by jonathansamuel ( 59294 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @04:57AM (#1244732) Homepage
    According to an article on CNET [yahoo.com]
    Caldera Systems had revenue of $553,000 for the quarter ended Jan. 31, 2000, a slight increase over the $538,000 garnered in the same quarter a year ago, the company said.
    The market values Linux companies highly because they are supposed to be experiencing massive revenue growth. But Caldera has hardly grown at all in the past year, if this statistic is any indication.
  • This is why you see things like all of Amazon's stock changing hands four times in its first week. The VC's get in at prices you wouldn't believe and get out before you can even place a trade.

  • That logo... (Score:3)

    by Tim Behrendsen ( 89573 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @05:18AM (#1244736)

    Does anyone else see a partial Micky Mouse painted on a globe whenever they see that logo?

    Given Disney's litigiousness, I predict a future lawsuit. :)


    --

  • is what it looked like to me, yes it does.

    In related matters, it may be a not so good time for IPO's, the market in general appears to have peaked around last Dec., and economists are talking about 'soft landings' again - don't think I've heard that for several years. And I can't beleive Greenspan said he sees "no sign of inflation" with a straight face - he obviously doesn't pump his own gas into the limo! When they worry about price rises and jack up interest rates bonds perform better than stocks.
  • Due to Caldera's distant relationship with Novell, I thought it would be worthwhile to point out that they are rele asing [zdnet.com] NDS and GroupWise for Linux. I think something like this could hype up the value of Caldera and RedHat stocks, and might offer these companies some way to actually make money.
  • Its a Disney logo in disguise! check here [ringworld.org] AHHHHH!

  • The only word anybody heard was "gun" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The police claim to have said something, but nobody still alive remembers hearing it, except for the four guys who were trying to talk their way out of prison.

    The "shouted" part is your own interpolation, trying to make your story sound better even as you were writing it. Typical logic: "My version of events must be true; if it were not, I'd be a jackass, and that's unacceptable. Therefore, anything which tends to support my version must be true, so if I make stuff up, I'm really just 'remembering' facts that I haven't heard yet". Or something like that.

    It's a shame you feel you have to resort to this bullshit, because the reason they started shooting was actually close enough to common sense that it convinced a jury: Diallo started pulling out his wallet (a mistake, but not bizarre or stupid: Most of us keep ID in our wallets). One of the cops slipped and fell, quite accidentally and nothing to do with Diallo. Meanwhile, one of the cops mistook Diallo's wallet for a gun (in classroom demonstrations of human perceptions under stress, people have mistaken bananas for guns) and yelled "gun". At the same time, of course, another of the cops was falling, and the rest put 0.9 and 0.7 together and got 2. The cops' story, and it is a plausible one, was that it was a coincidence and bad judgement in a tense situation, and they fucked up. Myself, I happen to think their perception of potential danger may have been considerably greater than it needed to have been, due to the fact that Diallo was black. I could be wrong about that, but I've known a couple of NYPD officers, one of them (a close relative) quite well, and it's not far-fetched. Racist attitudes are not universal among NYPD officers by any means, but they are not rare.

    Finally, there is no law on the books anywhere in the United States which provides for a summary death penalty for moving when a cop says "freeze". Okay? That, in and of itself, was not sufficient cause to shoot the guy. The only case in which a cop is legally justified in using deadly force is if s/he has reason to believe that his or her life, or that of a bystander, is in immediate danger. They shot Diallo because they thought he was shooting at them: He had something dark in his hand, and one of the officers fell. There was no gunshot, obviously, but when they saw him go for his back pocket (the wallet, remember) they probably went into adrenaline overdrive: perceptions and thought processes are altered in that state.

    Don't try to smear bullshit all over this: They fucked up royally and killed an innocent man. Their defense attorneys said that, and they said it themselves. It's the truth. They were acquitted because the law allows for the fact that the police are sometimes required to make snap decisions involving deadly force under great pressure, and sometimes they fuck up. When that happens, we drag them into court, make a big fuss about it, and we hope that the jury makes the right call: Was it a mistake that any reasonable person could easily have made in the same circumstances? Was it a stupid mistake? Or was it just plain murder? The jury here seems to have thought it was a mistake they might have made themselves. I'm not certain that they were right about that, but I tend to lean in that direction.

  • You guys are loons, but it is still funny.

    Caldera is the only Linux I have had crash on me.

    EC
  • This is likely the end of Caldera as a viable Linux vendor. The moment any company issues an IPO, they cease to be an economically signifigant business. The main impetus of their activity becomes financial activity - playing the stock market - and ceases to be competitively providing goods and services to the market. And the people who founded the company, with the original intent of earning profit by selling a quality Linux distribution, will no longer be the actual owners of the company. Their policy will now be determined by a corporate bureaucracy at the behest of stockholders, whose main purpose in investing is to gain a short term profit without regard for the actual business operations of the company. The stock market is anti-Capitalistic, anti-Individualistic, and detrimental to the economy. Caldera has, in issuing its IPO, handed the company over to the practical equivalent of Las Vegas gamblers.

  • Off topic but funny (Score:3)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @05:59AM (#1244745) Homepage
    Always liked this 'rags-to-riches' story:

    A golf caddy asked a patron how he'd earned his fortune. The Billionaire replied, "Son, it was the depths of the depression in the 30's. I was down to my last nickle. One morning I bought an apple with that nickle and polished it all day. At the end of the day I sold it for 6 cents. The next day I did the same, an after a week could afford 2 apples. This went on for several months, at the end of which I'd earned a grand sum of $4.38. Then my wife's father died and left us 3 million dollars".
  • YES! I replied to this thread only for that reason! I tried to figure out why the Masters of Slashdot used a Disney logo, and it took about a solid minute of staring at it before I saw the "C". It's eerie.
  • Of all of the production linux shops I go to, one thing they all have in common is the distro they aren't running - Caldera.

    This isn't to say that it isn't of high quality, but simply that Caldera has been outmarketed and outpromoted by Red Hat.

    I just don't see how Caldera can make a go of it unless they drop their witless marketing department and really start working on getting Caldera into more places that matter.

  • Caldera is already slipping off of the radar as RedHat bulks up and outmarkets them.

    Caldera's only hope at avoiding complete irrelevancy is to bulk up with some quick cash and either start marketing their product for real, or make aquisitions that give it a reason to exist.

  • Can somebody explain to me why they start so low when they'll obviously be over 50$ the first day? It doesn't make sense.

    Is Lineo included in this? If so, it might be a good investment.
  • I really don't know if any of the Linux companies are worth their massive stock valuations. Companies like amazon.com also aren't worth it, but have to potential to be. Linux however, probably doesn't have the potential to make anyone any money. How does a Linux company make money? By selling support, right? Yet, how many companies actually use the support from their OS provider? Most have support contracts for their hardware, but software issues are usually handled by internal IT staff. Companies like SUN and SGI can make money by giving their OS away because they have hardware to sell. Caldera on the other hand, only make money from the distro and from any support it sells. That means a company that previously bought 100 copies of NT from MS, can now just buy 1 copy of Linux from cheapbytes.com. Its not like they used MS support anyway, they just had their IT guy fix it. Thus the market for a corperate linux distro shrinks from everyone who uses the OS, to those who use the OS, but can't install it themselves and can't afford IT staff. Thats a very small piece of the market. Another way for the company to make money would be to write propriatory extensions for Linux. Caldera actually tried this before with Caldera Linux 1.3. Of course it failed. In the wide open world of Linux, proriatory Linux extensions won't fly. This can easily be seen in Redhat. You'd think that a company that entirely owns the corperate linux market would be making money? Redhat is losing something like $35 million a year. As for VA Linux, what the hell are they thinking? Why would I buy from some upstart Linux company when I can get systems from Dell, a proven, reliable company that actually has good service and support! Believe it or not, corperate types don't buy into the labor of love that is Linux. They are business, and they will do whatever makes sense, not what makes them feel good by helping out some upstart linux company.

  • Method to Participate in Directed Share Program (Score:4)

    by foo_48120 ( 156977 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @07:50AM (#1244760) Homepage
    I downloaded the Caldera IPO filing [sec.gov] on Edgar to try to see how to participate in the Directed Share Program. I found that you need to open an account with Wit Capital [witcapital.com] (Their site is jsp :) )

    The specific text from the filing is on page 69 and 70 of the document, on my printed copy it was pages 74 and 75 of 393...

    They say half of the 10% Directed Share Program goes to company employees and insiders and the other half to the Linux community via a program at Wit Capital. Apart from needing to fund a $2,000 account at Wit Capital, there is no more information about the program. I have an email in to ask of this at Wit.

    Anyone have more details?

    Here goes:

    Directed Share Program. At our request, the underwriters have reserved for sale, at the initial public offering price, up to ten percent of the shares of common stock offered in this offering under a directed share program. We currently expect that approximately half of these shares will be offered to directors, officers, employees, business associates, and related persons of Caldera Systems pursuant to a directed share program being administered by FleetBoston Robertson Stephens Inc., and that approximately half of these shares, pursuant to a directed share program being administered by Wit Capital Corporation, will be offered to open source software developers and other persons that we believe have contributed to the success of the open source software community and to the growth of Caldera Systems. We cannot assure you that any of the reserved shares will be so purchased. The number of shares of common stock available for sale to the general public in this offering will be reduced by the number of reserved shares sold. Any reserved shares not purchased will be offered to the general public on the same basis as the other shares offered in this offering.

    Purchases of the reserved shares pursuant to the directed share program administered by Wit Capital are to be made through an account at Wit Capital in accordance with Wit Capital's procedures for opening an account and transacting in securities. In addition, Wit Capital is an underwriter of additional shares in the offering. A prospectus in electronic format is being made available on an Internet web site maintained by Wit Capital. In addition, all dealers purchasing common shares from Wit Capital in this offering have agreed to make a prospectus in electronic format available on a web site maintained by each of them. Other than the prospectus in electronic format, the information on the web site and any information contained on any other web site maintained by Wit Capital or any dealer purchasing common shares from it is not part of this prospectus or the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, has not been approved or endorsed by us or any underwriter in its capacity as underwriter and should not be relied on by prospective investors. The National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. approved the membership of Wit Capital on September 4, 1997. Since that time, Wit Capital has acted as a co-lead managing underwriter on one offering, a co-managing underwriter on 61 offerings and a dealer on 107 offerings.

  • I agree. And the really big customers go for IBM, who has a really good support aparatus in place (especially if you have more than one type of hardware).
  • Actually this is not at all true.

    All early investors and employees are bound by a lockup agreement. The underwriters demand
    this as a condition of their participation in the IPO.

    This keeps the market from being flooded from the outset.

    Generally the VC firms pass their stock back to the investors in the VC funds, who tend to hold
    things long-term. The initial activity on an IPO is simply people flipping the stock back and forth
    trying to maximize their gain.

    Red Hat's lockup period just ended, which is a likely contributor to the recent slide from the mid 90's
    to the 68.5 that it closed at yesterday. VA just released earnings last week that were misinterpreted
    on several fronts. You can see the details on the investor relations page. [valinux.com]

    The stock market is a complex beast and doesn't lend itself to simple or absolute explainations.

    --Kit

  • That interpretation must be highly cultural. To me it looks more like a heart or the African continent ;)
  • Who believe this Bull (market) suffer at the hands of latter day James Fisks [uni-heidelberg.de]

    From london Financial Times Thursday Feb 24,article on Egg, a UK internet bank which is loosing money fast by enticing depositors with rates it cannot support (cant a city full of bond traders tell this is screwed?) says :

    "In the short term no doubt, the Pru [Prudential, Egg's owners, a British insurer] will ensure Egg's stock flies. An engineered stock squeeze would certainly help, and predictably, Prudential is planning to list just 15 - 25% of the capital"

    After the US saw its whole people belittled (and a world economy brought to its knees) by such machinations, simple manipulations such as those employed by Fisk were outlawed. Previous to Fisks demise, Vanderbuilt had been hailed as building a great empire upon such tricks. People will be in awe at such money - this is the nature of money. It has power over people who work for it. However it seems that we are no longer awake in vigilance against even the most puerile of deceptions.

    [ft.com]

  • http://search.ft.com/search/multi/globalarchive.js p?query=lex+Prudential&docId=00022400112 2&searchCat=1&offset=6&query=a href="http://search.ft.com/search/multi/globalarch
  • I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not claim you are trolling, thoughif I had moderator access, I would be tempted to mark your post as such. I will reply for the benefit of the other readers.

    I'm not sure how you think no one uses the support structure from their OS. While its true that pretty much no one calls on Microsoft when problems go wrong (lets not open up that can of worms) in any UNIX (and I dont differentiate between Linux and Unix) shop, support is of key importance. Most critical systems these days are running under some flavor of unix.

    I will use Sun as an example, because maintaining those systems is how I make a living.

    We have an extensive support contract with Sun, both with their hardware *and* software. If we encounter a bug or some other problem in software, we want answers quick. Dont give me any of this usenet bullshit, I want a paid professional on the other side of the phone when there is a computer problem of critical importance affecting my business. The same goes for hardware. I work for a major international exchange, we take our IT support issues seriously. I dont doubt that millions of other companies of all sizes are the same way.

    So to wrap things up, as Linux matures and more companies begin to adopt it for critical functions, you better bet your ass that the support structure for Linux will improve and become a big source of revenue. True, IBM and other pre-Linux companies will have a share of that market, but there is no reason at all to claim RedHat, VA, Caldera, or other so-called "Linux Companies" cannot profit and become successful on a support-based model.

    siri

  • It does not boil down to dividends. Thats idiotic. Personally, if they decide to pay me 5 cents a share dividends based on , say, they make 15cents a share, I would have to have millions of shares for it to be worth anything. And then it wouldnt be very much at all, like 50K, thats nothing to someone with that much shares. And yes, you can live on buying low and selling high, thast the only way to make money. I could of sold LNUX at 131 or so a two days ago, and bougt back like 110. Thats is 21 x However many shares I have. Thats where the money is made, certainly not on dividends.
  • Yes!

    It reminds me of the Mickey Mouse o n the side of blue G3's [oitc.com] that spurred the constant rumors of an Apple/Disney merger. I assume the arrival of the G4 put an end to that.
  • No, he was only hit 19 times, in 41 bullets fired. That shows the desperation, chaos, and split second reasoning that has been argued from the start. This is a tragedy on two fronts, first a young man is dead, that is tragic. However, it is also tragic that four men, have been tarred with as lynches, even after a jury has ruled they did nothing wrong.

    Nate Custer
  • wow, dont let your digressions circumscribe you...
  • I'm not sure about the statistics of how many companies are in the position of having extensive support contracts, so I may be wrong as to the size of the support market, but my post really wasn't about companies like Sun anyway. Thats not the market the Linux in its present form is targeting. Instead Caldera and Redhat are mainly targeting the smaller server and workstation business, ie. everyone who uses NT. I can bet you that most shops that use NT have their own IT staff handle things, not MS staff. In the future, when Linux makes inroads in the high end, selling support might make sense, but in the market that Linux is in now, selling support is not a very good business proposition.

  • The other day, while drifting off to sleep, I suddenly realized in a flash: a market economy can't be a capitalistic economy. So the Stock Market is anti-market (funny, huh?) but not anti-Capitalistic.

    The reason for this is, is that in a full market economy, the competing firms aren't considered to have any control over supply or price, so that if they either cut production or drive up price they will be undersold by their competitos. This leads to businesses making profits only equal to regional elasticisity, technology growth or other small factors. And with no profit, no capital is generated.

    The ideal economy varies a little from market in that the competing firms can control price enough to make a little capital to embark on new projects, and therefore make better products. When they can control the price enough to make huge profits heedless of consumer choice, everyone suffers, especially when those profits turn into capital to finance products that are totally irrational...such as the Great Wall of China or Windows NT as a real network server. Micro$oft may be the first monopoly in the history of capitalism to embark on econonmy damaging irrational egotistic ventures that used to be the province of insane despots.

    The upshot of this is that I agree with you mostly...the stock market is currently throwing their money around without regard to what will really help the economy. But it can still be used as it should be, to help finance new projects. And the guys at Caldera, being good Mormoms with good values, probably won't be getting corrupted, I hope.

  • Very true.

    As another aspect of the same phenomenon, let me tell you why my comapny uses HP-UX systems, instead of SGI or Sun (even though SGI and Sun are pretty big, aren't they). So, I work for this really huge company that has customers wolrdwide. We cannot afford to use Sun or SGI because, even though they are big UNIX vendors, they don't have quite worldwide support. And that is of critical importance for this market. HP has covered the globe pretty well, so you can expect the same level of support in South Africa and in China, UK and Egypt, Russia and USA. And that matters.
    This is the market Linux can't penetrate now, but it might in the future, thanks to the support of IBM, Novell and HP.

  • But, anyway, buying at $45 and selling less than a year later for $68 is not so bad.

    Especially when you remember the stock split, so if you bought 100 shares at $45 then, you'd be selling 200 shares at $68 now.

    --

  • Does anyone else see a partial Micky Mouse painted on a globe whenever they see that logo?

    ARGH!!! I didn't, until you mentioned it! Now that's what I see every time I glance at it, and I hate Disney! Thanks a lot...

    --


  • That's a 'C'?!?!

    Ooohhhh yeah.... I guess so. But the 'reflection' in it's upper right quadrant makes me think it's a spherical 3d shape, and so a 'flat C' gets translated into a red ocean around a blue continent. It doesn't make sense to have a 'flatish' C 'on' a spherical object.

    I think they should have gone with another graphics arts firm to come up with a logo. Even after all this, their logo doesn't "speak" to me.

    Heyyyy! Is that a 'G' in the Gnome logo? I never noticed that before.. :)

  • However, they do a great job of integrating with Novell networks.

    I was working for an orginization that is largely a Novell shop that was looking to integrate Linux into the mix. Caldera and RedHat where both evaluted. Some interesting points came up:

    • RedHat provided a convent way to choose the IPX frame type. Caldera OpenLinux defaulted to an incorrect IPX frame type and spit out a continual stream of errors to the console. The rc scripts had to be modified by hand to fix this.
    • Integrating authenitication to NDS via the PAM module (take your pick: Netware, LDAP or RADIUS) was easiest with RedHat. The material was already available in a precompiled format for RedHat. Caldera OpenLinux didn't provide anything for authenticating to OpenLinux via Netware passwords. To make matters worse, the much smaller Caldera user base doesn't seem to provide much in the way of third party binaries which where compiled and tested specifically with OpenLinux libraries.
    • Netware for Linux sucked in performance and has not been maintained. The NDS support in Caldera's Netware for Linux is badly out of date and tends to be the scape goat for DS related problems when calling Novell for support. Hence, Netware for Linux is best run in it's own independent and out-dated DS v6 tree. Also, once you remove the NDS advantage to Caldera Netware for Linux since it's NDS support sucks, it has not advantage in comparison to the MARS Netware emulator that ships with RedHat. MARS has both a performance and open-source advantages over the Caldera product.
    • Novell's DDNS/DHCP product is administored via a Java application much the same as ConsoleOne. But the install program for the Java application is a Win32 application. Neither Novell or Caldera has made any effort to make such platform independant administration pieces easier to install on Linux. There is no advantage to Caldera over RedHat in attempting to get Novell Java applications running on Linux.
    • The Linux 2.2 kernel already has NDS authenication support and Linux 2.4 continues to improve on this. The standard kernel support is available under open source and can continue to improve via peer review by the open source community. Caldera has kept even it's nkfs kernel module in secret for a long time causing customers to be locked into the specific kernel version that Caldera provides to take advantage of Caldera's Novell support. While Caldera has gotten around to releasing the nkfs kernel module source code, it remains so poorly documented that improving it would be more work the doing a complette rewrite.
    There are also other issues not related to Novell that make OpenLinux a very poor choice:

    • RedHat has been quick to respond to CERT advisories. OpenLinux has been on a slow maintaince schedule. Even security issues are left unresolved for weeks. Customers who subscribed to Caldera's yearly software maintance found their quarterly update CDs to always arrive months after the expected release dates.
    • RedHat honors it's software maintance agreements. Caldera provided a year long software maintance agreement which was supposed to cover ALL updates (both major or minor) over the entire year which was started with the orginization in October of 1998. When Caldera released OpenLinux v2.3 in September of 1999, they declaired all yearly maintaince agreements to be expired and did not ship the v2.3 update in accordance to the maintaince agreement license they authored.
    • Caldera has a reputation of being a poor player with the open source community. One of the horror stories was Caldera's "commitment" to contributing to the WINE project be short lived when they gain rights to distribute WABI. The contributions that they told the WINE members they would provide where never released. (And their support of WABI was not all that great either, even declairing all those running X servers in 16-bit mode to be unsupported).

    With all the advances the Linux community is making on their own, Caldera is loosing all compettive edge. One of the very few right moves done by Caldera Systems was declairing the Caldera would provide support for Netware for Linux running on RedHat. If they dropped OpenLinux and focused providing *REAL* support for product offering to be run on the commerically recognized distributions (RedHat, SuSE, TurboLinux, etc) then they might be worth re-investigating. As it stands right now, their ability to support OpenLinux is lacking and their ability to deal with other Linux offerings seem to be suffering along with it.

  • RedHat - opened at $7, rocketed to $151, now $68.
    VA Linux - opened at $30, rocketed to $320, now at $113.
    Cobalt - opened at $22, rocketed to $172, now $104.

    All three of those Linux stocks peaked around December, and are now tanking. So Wall Street seems to think that the Linux fad is over. That was quick.

    The Caldera IPO is somewhat less ambitious, but it's still one of those "we're selling a few percent of the company but want more for it than we're now worth." deals. There are over 20 million shares of Caldera around, and they're selling about 5 million. Noorda will still own a majority of the stock after the IPO.

  • Tech stocks typically have P/E ratios of over 60 unless the company in questionis in big trouble. This means that it is impossible for the companies to pay decent dividends -- more than a 1.7% dividend would use up all the companies annual profit. On the other hand, big established companies that aren't experiencing rapid earnings growth and consequently carrying more realistic P/E levels are more prone to paying dividends.

  • In the end it boils down to dividends.

    Take a look at how the S&P and the Dow Jones have been doing recently. Take a look at how the perofrmance of these indices compare to dividend yields of dividend stocks-- how many companies can you name with a dividend yield of more than 5% ? Many dividend stocks do not perform much better than savings accounts if you only consider the dividend yields. Something like an index fund ( or any solid mutual fund ) will not only have a modest dividend yield but also have some growth. What this tells us is that if the average Joe sticks money into a diversidied portfolio ( or mutual fund ), the chances are that they will make money.

    However it's important to invest in companies with a good business model ( not like Redhat ). Companies that don't and wont turn operating profits are simply put, bubbles. On the other hand, promising companies that are experiencing steady earnings growth can make good investments, dividend or no dividend.

    live on buying low and selling high, in the long run you'll take losses as well as gains.

    Yes, but if you gain on average, then that's not a problem. If you're talking about day trading, then I agree. However, there is a case to be made for investing in growth stocks with solid financial performance and a good business strategy.

    These huge initial gains and later losses are typical of all hi-tech papers, Yahoo and Amazon have similar price histories.

    These companies have poor financial records. One needs to consider not just possible stock increase -- it's important also to check that the price increases are driven by earnings increases and not hype. In the case of internet bubble stocks, the companies not only aren't experiencing solid earnings growth, they aren't even able to run at an operating profit.

  • Now that many of the slashdot readers have experienced the magic of IPOs, I'm wondering what their experiences have been with trading companies?

    Are the online trading companies worth it?
  • Absolutely ...

    I thought it was Mickey at first, and only after clicking on it did I realize that it was a letter C.

  • Why do you think IBM has been supporting Linux? Look a few years down the road. The computers get bigger, faster, more complicated. There are more ways to get it wrong, and the interactions get more subtle. Hackers handle a part of the problem space that IBM and big iron cannot. With journaling file systems now under GPL, how long before hackers with surplus 486 boxen and bad disks try to see what it takes to fubar a system, and then fix things so it can't happen in the future. I cannot imagine IBM doing that in a closed, secret test facility. Wrong image for the company. I get the impression that the influx of capital into the Linux companies is being used to shore up the infrastructure and cure some of the grungy problems that require paid help.

    Is there money to be made from Linux? Consider if the software you are using were GPL'd (free speech) and downloadable free (beer), would your company drop the HP support? I didn't think so. ;-)
  • actually, i once walked through a disney Imagineering hallway and saw a picture of a water atom that they had blown up. it looked just like Mickey with the large oxygen atom in the middle and the two H's as ears! perhaps disney is going to claim copyright on 2/3 of the world's surface now.
  • In general fast growing companies are not expected to pay dividends. The stock market prefers them to invest the money instead, in the expectation of future profits.

    In practice, paying dividends is getting increasingly rare across the board.You could interpret this either as an indication of a very rapidly growing economy or an insane stock market.
  • a budget increase for the police? are you slap fucking mad. I think it's a clear case of the blue suits needing to take less action and direct attention to the greater problem of fixing fundamental problems of society. Simplicity is genuis, throwing more money at problems won't help only create more. Haven't we had enough? Anton.
  • Yes, it was an upsetting tragedy. But the cops were unanimously acquitted by a jury of their peers What makes you reasonably think that has anything at all to do with them being let off. Do you think jurors aren't pressured in the deicisions they make. Noone, especially the minorities want to see this type of thing happen. The laws are built around protecting the defendent; not the person who lies dead. Jurors can't take the law into their own hands. They don't want to be there in the first place, and the mixed opinions between the jurors causes confusion between themselves anyway. The system doesn't work to the benefit of society, it works to the benefit of the indvidual (esp. cops), despite guilt or innoncence. Don't feed me garbage about unanimaously acquited by a jury of "their" peers. They have no choice but to vote unamiously in a murder case. The battle of injustice isn't just fought within the system, it's fought on the outside as well. -Anton
  • just the Employees - doesn't seem that the rest of the crowd has seen anything / or heard of any e-mail creeping into their box . . I haven't seen a thing .. but that doesn't mean a thing.. RHAT & LNUX shares were hard to come by . . . but well worth the hassle .. matched wits with the brokers, and I prevailed..

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