The turbulence in Wall Street is not so bad today, but Novell is already down 4.31% to $4.22. Its market cap sank to 1.46 billion and Microsoft too seems to have reached its lowest value in about 10 years, despite massive buybacks, a rumoured spendings freeze and looming debt. Community distributions of Free software seem unaffected, if not poised to capitalise on the storm. Yesterday, for example, Sabayon's Joost Ruis wrote: "Our team is growing stronger and everybody is working hard to get things in shape."
--NetworkWorld on 'Über' analyst Katherine Egbert
--Linus Torvalds
Comments
Josh Bell
2008-10-10 18:41:26
Yes Novell's, Microsoft's and even RH's numbers are horrible right now as are the global markets in general. But we really don't know how well some community distros like Ubuntu are doing since they are privately owned and do not have to report the same way publically traded companies do. In regards to the analyst's comments those were made before the global meltdown that no one predicted. She may have been right if things stayed equal. After all Novell's 52 week high was over $8.00 per share.
AlexH
2008-10-10 19:00:48
In fact, all distributions rely on commerce to some degree or other: whether it's simply subsidising download service, or subsidising large amounts of development (e.g. Ubuntu), the fact that the stock markets aren't doing well is no cause for celebration.
Whether or not you like everything Novell do, wishing for their demise seems to be an entirely unproductive position to take with respect to free software. As one of the largest contributors, the free software community would be much worse off even before you count the "controversial" Mono contributions.
Roy Schestowitz
2008-10-10 19:06:06
The scale of the meltdown is not something an individual (or even one country) can control. It's terrible, but it's just something to accept, not to fight. I merely try to see where we might end up when the storm is through.
As for Canonical, Mark Shuttleworth had deep pockets, so they'll do fine.
Josh Bell
2008-10-10 19:27:15
@Roy: I know Mark has deep pockets but the market affects everyone even those with deep pockets.
Roy Schestowitz
2008-10-10 19:36:33
Roy Schestowitz
2008-10-10 20:19:20
AlexH
2008-10-10 20:35:43
With the brains he has in his operation, he almost certainly has plenty of money still available. But it will have affected him; those with even the deepest pockets are being affected.
With share prices this low, it actually means a couple of things. Companies like Red Hat, who are otherwise extremely profitable, suddenly become possible targets for private capital.
The companies who underwrite the community distros - like AMD, HP, Intel, etc. - are also suffering. That could easily affect the likes of Debian.
You can't just look at the share price and say those people are hurting. Most of them are doing stock buy-backs, and the low price really benefits them.
I think you're right to worry about Mandriva. I also worry about Sun, and (to a much lesser extent) Red Hat. This is going to affect everyone.