| Sumario: | On June 4, 1999, Red Hat, the chief distributor of the popular Linux operating system, filed its initial public offering. In the event of the flotation proceeding, Red Hat will become the first company that makes its living from selling “open-source” software, which is produced by volunteers rather than by paid programers, to go public. The listing implies that the financial establishment believes that a revolution may be on its way in how software is produced. The writer discusses other listings in the pipeline, why Red Hat and its kind are not typical venture-capital investments, open-source firms that have attracted venture capital, the idea that many big programs will eventually be written the open-source way, and why open-source companies will be harder to run than are typical start-ups.
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