Will Canonical ever go public?

[funkadelic]

I know VERY little about this stuff, so this may be a stupid question, but...

Will we ever be able to buy stock in Canonical?

In general, how could someone "invest in Linux" ?

[Adamant1988]

Not likely. Publicly traded companies are usually at the mercy of stock holders who want the company to make money for them. Since Canonical doesn't seem to have a great business model (yet) it's highly unlikely.

[fusiachi]

Also, going public can be very costly, especially so if you don't generate the right amount of investment activity. It's possible, but right now I'd consider it a bit of a long shot.

[SunnyRabbiera]

Maybe in the future as redhat and novel... I mean microsoft :p have stocks.
Mandriva had a stock at one time I believe too.

[Adamant1988]

On second though, Canonical will probably never go publicly traded. The reason I say so, is look around you. The community is filled with rabid anti-corporate OSS freaks who would flip out at hearing that news. Seriously.

Would it make sense to go public? Not right now, simply because again, Canonical is a financial sink hole. Investors want to see money coming in, they like getting paid with their dividends.

Provided that Canonical comes up with a good, solid, practical business model, going public might make some amount of sense. But then you have to look at the community again, granted ubuntu would become much more professional and polished if that happened, but I'm willing to bet it would *feel* more corporate too, and generally lack that warm community feeling.

[fusiachi]

I tend to agree.


Maybe in the future as redhat and novel... I mean microsoft :p have stocks.
Mandriva had a stock at one time I believe too.

These companies felt they were in a position to make an IPO; that doesn't mean Canonical should. But sure, maybe in the future. Maybe.

While a corporate structure seems to contrast philosophically from the FLOSS movement, one might contest that a public company is the ideal end-state (if responsibly directed). Everyone contributes, everyone benefits. Note: Haven't really thought this through a lot, so forgive me if it doesn't make much sense.

[aspro]

...While a corporate structure seems to contrast philosophically from the FLOSS movement, one might contest that a public company is the ideal end-state (if responsibly directed). Everyone contributes, everyone benefits. Note: Haven't really thought this through a lot, so forgive me if it doesn't make much sense.

Though with a public company it isn't really everyone contributes, everyone benefits. You need to have money to buy stocks and there are only a limited amount of them so it is going to be somewhat exclusive in any case. Though it is better than a privately owned company in that sense, there is can be a wider shared ownership.

[Adamant1988]

Those with voting shares are at least supposed to contribute their votes to the company. But mostly it's just "Ok, I own part of this company now, give me my share"