I'm not sure. They talk big about data analytics, but have you ever noticed how bad their recommendations are? E.g. I just bought a pack of phone screen protectors, and then I started getting emails suggesting I buy other screen protectors. So either their recommendations are terrible or they think their product is terrible. And that doesn't even touch how badly they compare to Netflix's video recommendations!

Middle men can have value: for example, the grocery store, distributors, etc are middle men between you and a farmer. Does that make them evil?

http://www.sec.gov/answers/sec31.htm

Are you familiar with the existing SEC fee on sales in the market?

For me (not a big investor, not involved in the private equity deals, etc), Facebook has 0 liquidity. Even low-but-not-zero liquidity matters. E.g. look at spreads on ETFs that have very little liquidity vs ones with lots of liquidity. How do you access the market? Why does it take you 24 hrs to make a trade? I'm not advocating day trading or anything, but that is surprisingly slow.

The liquidity doesn't matter for the issuer, it matters for the investor. If it is difficult to sell your investment (say if you want the money for something else, or decide you can invest it more effectively in another company, etc) because of little or no liquidity, then you will be less likely to invest.

You do realize that you can't get "long-term" capital gains while doing "high frequency" trading right? They already pay short-term capital gains (which are taxed at the income rate)...

Actually, spreads are tighter now than they used to be. For a small long-term investor, that's a good thing.

Have you already tried to contact the project lead(s)? Maybe they'd help you take it over, or your interest could encourage him/her/them to get going again, etc...

I'm a little concerned about MySQL and the GPL... Here are some thoughts of mine about MySQL AB and the GPL: http://www.crownandcutlass.com/blog/2007/01/15/mys ql-ab-and-the-gpl/

The link I have there for the MySQL internals doc seems to be invalid... It has moved to here: http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/MySQL_Internals_Client Server_Protocol#Licensing_Notice

Here is a quote:

Because this is a GPL protocol, any product which uses it to connect to a MySQL server, or to emulate a MySQL server, or to interpose between any client and server which uses the protocol, or for any similar purpose, is also bound by the GPL. Therefore if you use this description to write a program, you must release your program as GPL.

I don't think that's a valid use of copyright, but I'm not a lawyer. Can anyone explain to me how that's a valid use of the GPL?