Hello! Been following Linus, Linux, and Red Hat for a while, tried to get in with the VC, but no luck. Assuming you all believe that Linux will take off, where are we investing, and how?
Most of us here are buying convertible bonds from E. Charters as he attempts to fold an improved graphical environment directly into the Linux kernel.
Seriously, this has become a favorite question of mine. I find myself jumping on it often in various places. I should write a 'Linux investment' HOWTO. Okay, a mini-HOWTO. Okay, a Micro-mini-HOWTO. Okay, it might only be four letters...
Perhaps not the answer you're looking for, I strongly feel that the best way to invest in Linux doesn't involve the type of equity traded on the NASDAQ. Rather, the best way to invest in Linux involves getting socially active in one way or another to effect change in secondary school technical curriculum, and helping create the type of equity that our society is quickly about to come up seriously short of unless we do otherwise.
To address the question from the standpoint of 'show me the money', I believe the publicly traded company that has the most to gain from pervasive Linux, is SUNW (over half of my portfolios). You'll see Compaq, HP, Dell, and the rest of the Intel architecture jumping into the Linux space, particularly after the next generation Intel chip. Ultimately though, Linux use (displacing NT) creates a windfall for SPARC/Solaris, particularly SPARC.
Here's a link (reg req) with a view of Sun/Linux.
nwfusion.com
And no other Unix vendor is embracing
Linux as an NT alternative more warmly
than Sun. Just listen to John McFarlane,
Solaris software division president: "The
movement back toward open systems is
superb for Sun. It's a revitalization of
open systems, a revitalization of Unix.
People have come to the conclusion that
NT just may not make it.
Another Linux play that I'm into speculatively is Corel (COSFF). Aside from porting their WordPerfect and CorelDraw to Linux and having highly competent programming talent somewhat expert in matters regarding the (obscured) Windows API, their 'Linux' revenue stream is buried a little deeper in equities apart from their core business. Recently, Corel traded their JBridge interop technology to GraphON (brokered by Sun), in exchange for an equity stake in GraphON. The nature of computing is becoming increasingly heterogeneous. GraphON's 'Go' and now JBridge technology should make a decent splash over the next 12 months. Bigger than that perhaps for Corel is the equity stake that they just traded for their Netwinder HW product. If VA Research is planning on going from 37 to 200 employees in the next year selling Linux boxen, one could extend that market planning out to Linux Netwinder sales growth. Corel speaks the language of the Linux market. I'm very anxious to read the July '99 earnings for COSFF.
The best Linux 'play' is probably on 'open standards' computing. At the center of that is SUNW. Linux is an absolute mindshare windfall for open computing and by extension, SUNW.
-JCJ
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