Late last week, July 30th, Linux Weekly News published a report in Salon discussing a failed RedHat investment. I find the reporting in slashdot , LinuxToday , and Linux Weekly News to be very poor indeed on this story. To my knowledge, no other company has attempted to reward the volunteers who made them successful. RedHat and other free software companies are attempting to create a new business model and now RedHat seems to be using an IPO to reward contributors as well as raise money for expansion. In the possibly hopeless cause of convincing RedHat bashers to open their minds here, I should also mention that I fully believe other free software distributors will do the same.
Stocks provide one way for investors to encourage, fund, and benefit from a company's success.
There may be others, but in the economic framework we have now, I can't think of a better way for all of us in the free software community to benefit each other. Part of that community is the media that reports on it - the media done by us. Their reporting on this has been suboptimal. Slashdot still chose to post the eloquent IPO reject story from Salon without mentioning the recent change in policy. LWN Daily, LinuxToday, and slashdot report stories in minutes.