[svlug] Investing in OSS

[Alan DuBoff]

On Wed, 6 Jan 2010, Jeff Shippen wrote:

> I'm new to Stock Market investing, and would like to help out OSS if
> possible.  Does anyone know any organization that I can buy stocks that
> would/might help OSS.  I've found the following:
>
> *Ticker*; *Organization*
>
> LNUX; Geeknet (formerly Source Forge)
> RHT; Red Hat
> GOOG; Google
> NOVL; Novell
> JAVA; Sun Microsystems

Jeff,

FWIW, I wouldn't consider Novell a company that has helped OSS 
so much, but I think we can agree to disagree on that. And I 
don't see Geeknet as a company investing in OSS either, but I 
haven't followed that too much. They help OSS, certainly.

Sun was investing in OSS for the most part, although some would 
argue of their intentions, I believe they were pretty good for 
the most part but their open-ness has been tainted with a 
"Clinton" definition of open, IMO. Since Oracle is acquiring 
Sun, I would wait and see how Oracle invests, since in the past 
they have not been a good OSS follower, from my perspective.

Other companies I would add to Red Hat and Google (what is left 
from your list) would be:

IBM - has made substantial investments in OSS, and continues.

Intel - also has made some substantial investments in OSS.

HP - has investing in the past, not clear on the current.

What I define as investing is hiring OSS developers and/or 
helping OSS projects with funds or development efforts.

Of course, FSF is a good company to help if your a follower of 
OSS, but not a publicly traded company.

--

Alan DuBoff - Software Orchestration
http://www.softorchestra.com:8080/roller/blog/