[CLUE-Talk] Red Hat NOT going out of business...

[Kevin Cullis]

Grant Johnson wrote:
> 
> Red Hat is doing better than expected due to expanding demand.
> 
> BTW, MS is doing worse than expected due to soft demand for Win 2K and
> Office 2K.  If they had used accepted and legal accounting methods last
> year, they would have posted a $2Bil loss rather than a $7Bil
> profit.  Their not acounting for stock options as an expense when used to
> compensate employees is illegal, as well as their "cookie jar" accounting
> practices.  Let's not let anyone in the Linux sector try this stuff.  If
> they do, make sure that we call them on it.  We need continued realism to
> make the long haul.  Financial troubles at the competition, and results
> better than expected at the Linux firms can only be the beginning of the
> end for the concept of closed API's.  There are times when closed source
> may make commercial sense, but closed API's and intentionally not working
> with competitor's software can never be good in the longer term.
> 
> http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/12/15/001215hnredloss.xml
> 

I agree.  The Firestone issue is when ethics go bad, not when processes
don't produce good products.  Eventually, trust is lost and takes a long
time to recover.

Kevin