Corel Corp’s Derik Belair has clarified the role of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) in Corel’s new Linux Advisory Council (CI No 3,678). We’ve been in touch with Eric Raymond since the beginning, Belair told ComputerWire, one of the key things that was made clear to us is that the Council should not be a matter of recreating what has already been done. The purpose of the advisory council is to maintain a commercial focus. That means evangelism to the binary-only software community. Once our members understand the possibilities and opportunities in open source, they would evolve to working with Eric Raymond after that, Belair explained. There was a bit of miscommunication, he admits, I think it was on our part, but obviously there’s a fit for the OSI, and judging from what Eric has said, it seems to be a natural fit.
Meanwhile, News.com is speculating that Caldera Inc will join Red Hat Software Inc, VA Linux Systems Inc and Linuxcare Inc in considering filing for an initial public offering of shares. While the prevailing view appears to be that Linux stocks will be the next ebullient dot coms, Linuxcare chief executive officer Art Tyde sounded a note of caution. I think there’s going to be a lot of hype around these IPOs, he said, I’d hate to see an investor dump a boatload of money into these companies and lose their shirt.
