The effects of open source on stock prices
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| Has open source been positive or negative for its primary (commercial)
| proponents? That's the question I asked myself yesterday about Red Hat, Sun,
| and Novell, and found the answer interesting. I looked at these three as
| they, more than any others, have results that can be isolated and directly
| attributed to open source. A company like IBM does a lot with open source,
| but it's harder to discern the effects on the company's stock price because
| its embrace of open source is less pronounced/distinct among its other
| corporate policies.
|
| [...]
|
| By mid-2004, however, Novell's stock price settled into the $6 to $8 per
| share range that it has maintained for the past four years. Analysts have
| waited for Novell's Linux and open-source story to fully materialize. Despite
| Novell's hype on the importance of its November 2006 patent agreement with
| Microsoft, the agreement has had no lasting impact on the value of the
| company. It helped to lift Novell's stock price in 2007...only to see it
| crumble back to the too-familiar $6 per share level.
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http://www.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9895316-16.html
Related and recent:
MIX - Novell's de Icaza criticizes Microsoft patent deal
,----[ Quote ]
| Open-source pioneer and Novell Vice President Miguel de Icaza Thursday for
| the first time publicly slammed his company's cross-patent licensing
| agreement with Microsoft as he defended himself against lack of patent
| protection for third parties that distribute his company's Moonlight project,
| which ports Microsoft's Silverlight technology to Linux.
|
| Speaking on a panel at the MIX 08 conference in Las Vegas, de Icaza said that
| Novell has done the best it could to balance open-source interests with
| patent indemnification. However, if he had his way, the company would have
| remained strictly open source and not gotten into bed with Microsoft. Novell
| entered into a controversial multimillion dollar cross-patent licensing and
| interoperability deal with Microsoft in November 2006.
|
| "I'm not happy about the fact that such an agreement was made, but [the
| decision] was above my pay grade; I think we should have stayed with the
| open-source community," de Icaza said. He was speaking on a panel that also
| included representatives from Microsoft and open-source companies Mozilla and
| Zend.
|
| [...]
|
| De Icaza shot back that it was "unfair" of Schroepfer to paint Novell as the
| only company protected by patent covenants, as many companies have signed
| licensing agreements not only with Microsoft, but also with other companies
| such as IBM that have a large patent portfolio.
|
| [...]
|
| The choice has drawn ire from open-source diehards who were displeased with
| Novell’s decision to sign a cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft in the
| first place. A Web site called “Boycott Novell” decried Moonlight as a
| Microsoft “pet project” and criticized the company’s decision not to port
| Silverlight to Linux itself.
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http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/03/06/mix-novells-de-icaza-criticizes-microsoft-patent-deal
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