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Red Hat Software Software Businesses The Almighty Buck Linux

Dell Founder Dropped $100M Onto Red Hat 298

Posted by Hemos from the what's-going-on-there dept.
diegocgteleline.es writes "Via google news, I found a article at MSNBC claiming that Michael Dell, Dell's founder and chairman, has droped $100M into Red Hat (Michael himself, not his company). Analyists say that "Dell - neither the person nor the company - is interested in acquiring Red Hat", but one wonders what's behind of this move. A fight against their competence in the server market?"
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Dell Founder Dropped $100M Onto Red Hat More

Dell Founder Dropped $100M Onto Red Hat

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  • Dell UNIX (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mrbill1234 ( 715607 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:17AM (#12477617)
    Once upon a time, Dell had their own SVR4 UNIX Distro. Perhaps Mr Dell has a passion for OS's.

    • Re:Dell UNIX (Score:3, Insightful)

      by RealProgrammer ( 723725 )
      Didn't that come with NeXTStep? I think the top machines were 50Mhz 486's at the time, but maybe I'm confused.

      That would have been around 1990.

      • Re:Dell UNIX (Score:2, Interesting)

        by mrbill1234 ( 715607 )
        Yes, these were the 486 days, but it had nothing to do with NextStep. Timeframe is right - early 90's. It was discontinued in 1993. It had quite a cult following. Do some googling and find out more if you are interested.

      • Re:Dell UNIX (Score:3, Informative)

        by Billly Gates ( 198444 )
        You are confusing Dell Unix with WebObjects made by Next which ran on Dells ecommerce site until recently when it was switched to .net.

        But nextOS was ported to x86 when it was dieng a year before Apple bought it in order to convert it to MacOSX.

    • More like sending a message to Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)

      by argoff ( 142580 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @02:55PM (#12479847)

      Once upon a time, Dell had their own SVR4 UNIX Distro. Perhaps Mr Dell has a passion for OS's.

      I wouldn't be supprised if this was more to do with Microsoft, to send them a message that they don't have the world over a barrel, than it is a passion of OS's. As computers get cheaper, every machine sold with Windows on it is going to be cutting into an increasing amount of profit margin, and just as the industry is getting cheaper - Microsoft is getting more expensive, perhaps this is more like the corporate way of saying f**k U, without putting anything on "Dell" - the company.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:19AM (#12477631)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Ok (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:19AM (#12477633)
    Dell - neither the person nor the company

    Aha

  • Maybe... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Momoru ( 837801 )
    Maybe he is hoping the stock goes back up to $29 where it was a year ago.... (its at 11 now)

    • Re:Maybe... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by smackjer ( 697558 )
      And it probably will with the news of Dell's investment.

      Self-fulfilling prophecy?

    • Re:Maybe... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by AHumbleOpinion ( 546848 )
      Maybe he is hoping the stock goes back up to $29 where it was a year ago.... (its at 11 now)

      RHAT is a very volatile stock, big price swings. 29 was at the high end of one of those speculative swings. Its sort of idling in the middle right now. It could go to 5 or 30 in the short term, it all depends on the new and what the speculators think, but in the longer term (say a couple of years) it will probably hit the mid to high 20s again.

    • Re:Maybe... (Score:3, Informative)

      by LnxAddct ( 679316 )
      Consdiering that Bank of America and a few other major investment companies are all saying to buy Red Hat stock, it probably will sky rocket again. Rumor has it that 2008 is supposed to be a good year (how someone can forecast that far ahead is beyond me). Red Hat would have still been at $29 if a major person from the corporation didn't all the sudden up and leave, investors freaked and pulled out. Anyway... you can't judge the value of a company by its stock price alone. If I had to invest in any tech com

  • linguistic note (Score:5, Informative)

    by greenguy ( 162630 ) <`estebandido' `at' `gmail.com'> on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:21AM (#12477647) Homepage Journal
    "Competence" = competition

    In Spanish, competencia means both, hence this is an easy error for native Spanish speakers to make in English.

  • Correct analyst quote (Score:4, Informative)

    by Software ( 179033 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:21AM (#12477648) Journal
    "The analyst does not see the purchase as a signal that Dell - neither the person nor the company - is interested in acquiring Red Hat."

    Sigh. Editors.

  • motivations. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:22AM (#12477661) Homepage

    but one wonders what's behind of this move.
    With a 100 million investment by an individual (and not a corporation) you can bet that Michael Dell thinks this is a good investment. That kind of money isn't chump change, so he must think it's a good risk.

    • Re:motivations. (Score:4, Informative)

      by zCyl ( 14362 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:35AM (#12477800)
      That kind of money isn't chump change, so he must think it's a good risk.

      When you have the kind of money he does, the correct phrase is "good enough risk." It probably just means that he thinks the probability of it going up, times the amount it would go up, makes it a worthwhile investment in comparison to the probability of the investment vaporizing.

      And he's probably right. If I had a spare $100 million sitting around, I might do the same.

      • Re:motivations. (Score:5, Funny)

        by Kent Recal ( 714863 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @01:42PM (#12479168)
        Just in case a very rich person with a similar problem is reading this:
        Invest in me!

        Give me only one million of your chump change and my gratitude will haunt you forever. And I'll write tons of screaming testimonials for any product that you may be selling. With pics.
        • > And I'll write tons of screaming testimonials for any product
          > that you may be selling. With pics.

          Hmm... I've been looking for a shill for my self-castration kit..

    • Re:motivations. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by turgid ( 580780 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @04:07PM (#12480720) Journal
      but one wonders what's behind of this move.

      Easy peasy.

      Dell's getting it's ass kicked by Opteron servers from the likes of Sun running Solaris and Linux.

      Dell is Microsoft's and intel's bitch. Dell only sells machines with intel processors to get a good price from intel. That's why they can sell their machines so cheap.

      Dell's contract with Microsoft forbids them from selling any quantity of machines without an OS (to prevent "piracy") or with Linux at a lower price than Windows. Try it, I did when I was buying servers for Sun. Despite the fact that we were going to be buying machines to develop and run Solaris x86, they said we either had to buy Windows or Linux (to preven "piracy"). I ended up buying Windows, because "Linux is more expensive" according to the Dell sales droids. Go figure.

      Everyone except Dell is selling Opteron servers, which are cheaper, faster and cooler than intel servers. Dell does not have an OS. Sun will sell you Linux or Solaris x86. HP will sell you Linux, Windoze or Solaris x86 (I jest not). IBM will sell you Linux or Windoze. Dell is bound to M$ as mentioned above.

      Michael Dell ain't stupid. He's covering his posterior, like all good business people do who want to still be in business in 5 years time.

  • Making sure you have multiple suppliers is smart. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:22AM (#12477665)
    Michael Dell is just making sure that he has multiple sources for his supplies. Operating systems is just one component in his systems. Only a veriy foolish CEO would tie himself to single source.

    He's also tweaking MSFT. MSFT could come back with lower prices (of course, they could come back with higher prices). Dell has enough muscle to pay the higher Microsoft price if asked to.

    • Re:Making sure you have multiple suppliers is smar (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Only a veriy foolish CEO would tie himself to single source.

      That you, AMD?

    • Re:Making sure you have multiple suppliers is smar (Score:4, Insightful)

      by nolife ( 233813 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @12:24PM (#12478249) Homepage Journal
      Michael Dell is just making sure that he has multiple sources for his supplies.

      Would Michael Dell suggesting to Dell the company that they should start using RH more, be a conflict of interests for the other investors? He has a vested interest in both companies. What if he bought a decent size of AMD stock and then within the next few months Dell the company decides to start using AMD chips? Maybe there is no oversight for transactions like that but it sure as hell seems that there should be.
    • Micheal Dell is not the CEO of Dell, Inc.
      Michael Dell is not a commodity manager for Dell, Inc.
      Obviously he has input into the strategy for the company, but I don't think he single-handedly negotiates deals with suppliers.

      Michael Dell only needs a single source for the OS on his personal computer. What Dell,Inc puts on their computers is unrelated to this story.

      I don't know how much "muscle" Michael Dell has, but I'm sure he has enough "money" to afford the higher cost of a single personal copy of Micros

    • Re:Making sure you have multiple suppliers is smar (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jimicus ( 737525 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @01:22PM (#12478957)
      There's another benefit.

      There's something to be said for investing in something which is the polar opposite of what your employer (or in Michael Dell's case, company) is doing. In very simplistic terms, it's reasonable to assume that if Linux usage does increase significantly, it'll be at the cost of Microsoft.

      This could bite Dell (the company) pretty hard given their close ties with Microsoft. However, as far as Michael Dell is concerned, he's hedging his bets. If Microsoft remains strong, his company wins. If Microsoft loses significantly to Linux (and he can't turn his company into a Linux-lovin' company rather than Just Another Microsoft Box-Shifter pretty quickly), he's still covered.

    • Re:Making sure you have multiple suppliers is smar (Score:4, Insightful)

      by PCMeister ( 837482 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @02:40PM (#12479714)
      The classification of his investment is a matter of semantics, plain and simple. Since Dell, the individual and not the company is making the investment, the company's board of directors and other executives can down play the move. This helps to keep Microsoft at bay, as indicated above.

      While I've never worked for Dell, contractor or otherwise, it's no secret that there are quite a few employees that like Red Hat and have been pushing it to the execs for quite some time. This is what lead the company to include it in their server products in the first place.

      The timing of the investment is interesting because Red Hat has beaten street estimates due to a rise in subscriptions (found in this [com.com] CNET article.) This must have the Red Hat development team jumping for joy. Dell's involvement will only drive them to introduce innovative technologies to both RHEL and Red Hat Desktop.

      What I believe will happen in the not too distant future is that Dell (the company) will:

      * Ante up and start promoting Red Hat based servers more than they have done in the past. While it may piss off MS, they'll respond, albeit gently, it's just business and keep going.

      * Create a sales bundle for small to medium businesses that will include an RHEL server and x amount of desktops loaded with Red Hat Desktop. All this with a migration team waiting in the wings to help the company through the initial learning curve.

      * Similar sales bundle for larger corporations, including clustering services and SAN related products.

      and finally...

      * Further collaborate with Red Hat to offer special pricing on multi-tiered support packages for Dell customers switching from Windows based systems. Since Dell already offers Linux training services and the like, it would basically be a strengthening of its partnership.

      Only time will tell! We'll revisit the issue in a few months as I'm sure it will garner more attention when Dell (the company) makes a move.
    • I note that (if I'm not confused or out of date) Compaq is noted for coming out with proprietary hardware that isn't well supported by Linux, while Dell's stuff is more open and supported well.

      If that's (still) true, increasing acceptance of Linux in the marketplace gives Dell an increased competitive advantage over Compaq.

      (Then again, maybe Dell is just being a nice guy. B-) )

  • He can afford it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Silver Sloth ( 770927 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:23AM (#12477678)

    If I had Dell's capital I might invest a few bucks in an up-and-coming tech stock like RH. It might prove very useful given that Dell have some interest in the cheepo server market.

    I'm not saying this points to some massive change in direction, just a little future proofing, and if it all goes wrong he can afford it.

  • if your RTA it sounds like his investment company reviewed the market, found a solid invtestment choice based upon the principals that he specified, and, likely with his approval, invested less than 1% of the money he had with them (not even all of his wealth) in that company.

    They're not going to discuss his reasoning but it likely says alot of red hat's market capitalization, nothing more.

    "Jedi Business, go back to your drinks"

  • BFD (Score:5, Informative)

    by sysadmn ( 29788 ) <{sysadmn} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:24AM (#12477688) Homepage
    Conspiracy theorists should read the article. (Oops, this is Slashdot...) Dell's investment management firm bought $99.5MM dollars of debentures out of $600MM offered. Red Hat's [yahoo.com] market cap is about $2 billion. On top of that, the debentures are convertible to stock at a rate that would give Dell about $42MM worth of stock. It's hard to control a company when you own 2% of the stock.
    Even then, Dell might make money on the deal:
    That's because MSD could have bought Red Hat's debentures using a strategy called "convertible arbitrage," wherein an investment firm buys convertible debt in one bet while short selling the company's common stock at the same time.
    .

  • Nothing funny here (Score:5, Informative)

    by DenDave ( 700621 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:24AM (#12477692)
    Actually at the time MSD procured the shares it made a lot of sense. ES3 was set to turn a massive userbase into a load of paying users. It was everyone's ecpectation that a significant portion of professional non-paying RedHat Linux 9 users would convert their systems to the paying model. At the time the expectation was that RedHat would thus generate a healthy amount of liquidity and that is always good for share prices. The market didn't quite play out that way but that is of course with hindsight. MSD's decision was a rational investment. Getting Michael Dell a say in the shareholders meeting is of course the priviledge of wealth and there can be no doubt that Dell's views on the market are not without audience in Raleigh. For MSD to diversify his investements is just sound financial management, I mean would you hedge your entire financial future on Dell Computer?? ;)

    speculation of Michael dell actually buying RedHat is, on this information, totally unfounded.

    • speculation of Michael dell actually buying RedHat is, on this information, totally unfounded.

      Which is why the article and the summary both said so. -1, Redundant. Though the rest of your post may have been interesting to someone.

  • Proofread, damn it! (Score:2, Informative)

    by PxT ( 26449 )
    Analyists say that "Dell - neither the person nor the company - is interested in acquiring Red Hat"

    Umm... actually that's not what they say. RTFA! Analysts do not see this as a sign that Dell is interested in acquiring RedHat.

    By the way... Analysists? droped? Spellcheck!

    • Re:Proofread, damn it! (Score:3, Informative)

      by mkw87 ( 860289 )
      maybe you should RTFA!!!! read what the analysists said....then read what you wrote and said they said. "Dell - neither the person nor the company - is interested in acquiring Red Hat" That means that neither Dell Computers or Michael Dell himself are interested in buying Red Hat.... i hope you have seen the error in your ways.

      • Re:Proofread, damn it! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jridley ( 9305 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @01:30PM (#12479044)
        Actually, syntactically that is a pretty ambiguous statement.

        If a sentence is properly constructed, you should be able to remove the modifier to get the meaning of this statement. "Neither the person nor the company" is just a modifier of "Dell" to specify which "Dell" they're talking about. Remove it for the sentence's meaning:

        "Dell is interested in acquiring Red Hat"

        However, they use a negative "Neither/nor" construction in an inclusive modifier, which really confuses things. If they really mean "not" they should start with a negative sentence:

        "Dell is NOT interested in acquiring Red Hat"

        and then modify it with an inclusive modifier:

        "Dell, EITHER the person OR the company, is not interested in acquiring Red Hat."

        Or they could be more specific and retain the neither/nor construction:

        "Neither Dell corporation nor Michael Dell is interested in acquiring Red Hat."

        Grammar slackers often make fun of grammar nitpickers, saying "they know what I mean." Well, not in this case. Taken as written, this sentence means the exact opposite of what was probably intended. Grammar conveys specific meaning, and people who do not know or care to follow the rules of grammar risk misunderstanding.

        This story is a great example of the fact that the slashdot editors seem to fall into at least one of those categories.
        • Grammar slackers often make fun of grammar nitpickers, saying "they know what I mean." Well, not in this case.

          funny, you seemed to know what he meant despite his incorrect grammar.
          • Not at first. Only after looking at the sentence several times, and realizing that as written, it either meant nothing or meant the opposite of what the rest of the article seemed to be saying, did I decide that it was just really bad writing. Actually I knew it was bad writing right away, I just eventually decided that not only was it bad, it was wrong.

  • Man, you people... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:26AM (#12477708) Journal
    A fight against their competence in the server market?

    I underestimated you guys! I'd have thought that this move, which seems to be his investment group making an arbitrage play, would be overspun as a ringing endorsement of Red Hat by Dell, and Michael Dell. Instead we get "It's a plot!!! A plot to destroy Lunix!!!!"

    I also like the way the submitter managed to completely invert the statement about how analysts _do_ _not_ believe this is takeover attempt.

    • I also like the way the submitter managed to completely invert the statement about how analysts _do_ _not_ believe this is takeover attempt.

      I never said Dell is buying Redhat

      Dell is fighting in hardware sales against sun/ibm/hp. Linux is growing faster than any other operative system out there. Red Hat is the most succesful linux distro in enterprise. Dell wants to sell lots of computers. See a trend?

      So, I wouldn't say that investing in redhat is going to hurt dell. My guess is that Mr. Dell is inte
      • I think that both '"Analyists say that "Dell - neither the person nor the company - is interested in acquiring Red Hat"' and "A fight against their competence in the server market?" make sense in Spanish but mean the opposite in English of what you intended. Obviously you're not a native speaker, so I apologize for being overly hasty to bitch at you.

        That said, I still doubt this news has anything to do with Dell Inc., and probably has very little to do with Michael Dell.

    • Instead we get "It's a plot!!! A plot to destroy Lunix!!!!"

      Actually, "It's a trap!" A trap to destroy Linux.

      Oh, shit, sorry, wrong website.

  • Maybe Dell's Covering Himself... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ubuntu ( 876029 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:29AM (#12477733) Journal
    ... like all good businessmen, whoever wins the OS wars, he wants to profit from it. If you can't beat them, join them.

    Michael Dell has always been a forward thinker (as evidenced by his innovation in sales techniques online) and I would imagine that he sees the potential in Linux. I wouldn't be surprised if his half-hearted attempts to sell Linux desktops were only half-hearted due to MS pressure and threats. MS has Dell and the other OEMs over a barrel. Dell may want his freedom, and Red Hat may be the "get out of MS Jail free" card he needs.

    I believe Linux actually is truly desktop ready -- and this is coming from a former Mac guy who relishes his ease-of-use more than anything. If I can use Ubuntu daily, anyone can. And I'm sure Dell has seen Linux's progress as well as anybody else here and is betting on it continuing. He's getting in on the "ground floor", so to speak.
    • "I believe Linux actually is truly desktop ready"

      GNOME and KDE are to a point where they are basically on par with Windows, in terms of usability. More ISVs need to recognize this and go back to supporting UNIX (and Linux). It's interesting how what's old can become new again.

      I imagine Microsoft is like a water baloon being squeezed from below by Linux and from above by Apple and with Solaris sticking needles into the sides. How long until it pops?
    • once its installed and configured (which is a service dell provides for microsoft windows, and would provide for linux) i believe linux is more logical:

      questions linux > windows converts would ask (if things were reversed:

      what the hell is c:? a:? d:? (many linux distro's now put a link on kde desktops for any removable media mounted)

      where is my home directory? wft is c:\documents and settings?

      why cant i use the default media player on anything less than a duel core athlon 64 4800+?

      how do i install s

  • "Neither the person nor the company"? (Score:3, Funny)

    by kahei ( 466208 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:30AM (#12477744) Homepage

    So, it wasn't Michael Dell, then. Nor was it Dell, the famed computer vendor. That only leaves Del Boy from 'Only Fools and Horses'. Heh, those crazy Cockneys and their money-making schemes! I bet they mess it up and wind up penniless again!

  • Spending pocket money (Score:3, Informative)

    by proxy2 ( 156777 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:30AM (#12477747)
    $100M accounts for 1% of his estimated cash [yahoo.com] value... so not really a big risk for Michael.

  • Money in free software (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pieterh ( 196118 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:31AM (#12477754) Homepage
    The irony, which few people appreciate today, but which will become painfully obvious within the next decade, is that there is more money in free software than in the commercial variety.

    Dell is putting some cash on the obvious Linux market leader. Personally, I'd put my $100m on Novell.

    Oh, and where "is" the money in free software? That's the lovely part. It's not in the software at all, but in the explosion of valuable products and services that it enables. We're only at the start of this process, it's barely visible.

  • Tomorrows headline: (Score:5, Funny)

    by FrothyBitter ( 848137 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:31AM (#12477755)
    Dell pre-installs Red Hat on all server machines to be sold.

    Friday's headline:

    Michael Dell sells shares in Red Hat for big profit.

  • "Michael Dell sinks $100M into Red Hat" (Score:4, Informative)

    by Senor_Programmer ( 876714 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:42AM (#12477862)
    denentures [bized.ac.uk] are debt. Michael did not invest in Red Hat in the sense that he bought into the companies long term success. He loaned them money. If they can't pay it back, Michael's $(99.5*10^6) may not be sunk. It might be a secured loan. I'll admit, I did not RTFA carefully enough to know if it is secured or not. Of course if the rate of return is high enough it's unlikely that RHAT won't be around long enough for principal recovery to be gravy on the steak.

    My $12K in Novell stock is different. It represents faith in the company as opposed to faith in the company being able to pay me back.

    Then again, Michael may be playing off Redhat against Microsoft to get bettr pricing, just like he does with AMD&Intel which could well result in the loan paying off many times over for his company, which he owns a lot of, in short order.

    Nowthat Senor dillitante investor has spoken, let's here from some folks who know what they're talking about :-)

    • Re:"Michael Dell sinks $100M into Red Hat" (Score:4, Informative)

      by pavera ( 320634 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:48AM (#12477916) Homepage Journal
      The debt was convertible (meaning they can change the debt to stock). Dell has already converted it, if you look at Redhat's balance sheets they showed 600 mil in debt, and over the last 3 quarters that has almost all disappeared as the owners of the debt have converted the debt to stock.
      It mentions in the article that Dell's stock after the conversion is only worth about 45 mil as Redhat's stock has tanked over the last year.
      • The debt was convertible (meaning they can change the debt to stock). Dell has already converted it, if you look at Redhat's balance sheets they showed 600 mil in debt, and over the last 3 quarters that has almost all disappeared as the owners of the debt have converted the debt to stock.
        How did RedHat get $600 mil in debt? Last I checked, they had almost $300 mil of cash in the bank and a negligible run rate.

        -a
        • They did a convertible debt offering, after it they had nearly 700 million in cash, so your 300 million number might be overstated or after the debt (the debt was more than a year ago). I assume they did it to grow, or to shore up their cash reserves, they were getting pretty low at least on their balance sheet (down around 75mil if I remember correctly, and it was right around the time they turned cash flow positive)

    • Novell impressed me when they bought SuSE. But what have they done with it since?

  • Sounds kind of heavy (Score:5, Funny)

    by GarfBond ( 565331 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:43AM (#12477874)
    Dropping $100M sounds like it might crush RedHat. All those dollar bills piled up on top of the roof...

    Imagine if they were Sacagaweas. Those poor Linux geeks wouldn't stand a chance with dollar coins raining down on their heads.
  • Red Hat has always had people wanting to give them money (as in investment, not just buying shares). From the beginning, Matthew Szulik was adamant about getting investors that brought something to the table besides their chequebook. Michael Dell certainly fits in that category, and i wouldn't be surprised if Red hat lobbied him hard for this investment.

    If RH is going to get anywhere on the desktop (their "next move" for the last 18 months), then they will need Dell Computer, and MSD still has some sway

  • Look out below! (Score:3, Funny)

    by b1t r0t ( 216468 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @11:52AM (#12477945)
    How much does $100M weigh? You could get hurt if someone dropped that much money onto you.
    • $100M = 234,602 gold ounces = 7,297kg
      $100M = 114,341 platinum ounces = 3,556kg

      I did some rough calculations on this topic a while back - for Sterling mind. $100M = £53.1M. My guesses were that this is what 20kg of notes would get you:

      £50 - 15686 notes (£784,300)
      £20 - 17105 notes (£342,100)
      £10 - 19033 notes (£190,330)
      £5 - 21,164 notes (£105,820)

      So:

      £53.1M in £50 notes would weigh 1,354kg
      £53.1M in £20 notes would weigh 3,104kg
    • If I wrote a check for $100M, it would weigh just a few grams. If I dropped that on someone, they wouldn't be hurt, since it would bounce ;-)
  • No matter how rich Michael Dell is $100 million is no small change. It's pretty obvious that he's as fed up with the MS BS as the rest of the world. He's looking to the future and it's not with MS. Good for him and good luck.

  • MS & Apple (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mushupork ( 819735 )
    Mr. Gates also invested $100mil in Apple. It's called hedging your bets.

  • Disappointing, really (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BrK ( 39585 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @12:04PM (#12478049) Homepage
    I *any* Dell invested US$100M in a company (ie Redhat) that they were planning on doing future business with, prior to any public announcements they could very possibly be accussed of insider trading.

    With all of the class action lawsuits going around these days I would doubt that Dell would want to risk any scrutiny for a "simple" investment. This leads me to believe that Dell has no intentions of significantly altering their current state in relation to Redhat, pre-installed linux, new offerings, etc.
  • You're the CEO of the most powerful OEM in the business, and right now you're reliant on Microsoft to keep bringing customers to your door. If you're Michael Dell, it seems you'd want to make sure that if Microsoft falls down on the job, you're in good with the most prominent Linux vendor.

    Dell is also sending a message to Microsoft: Just because we haven't embraced Linux at this juncture doesn't mean we won't in the future. It's a good way of letting MS know that he's not in their pocket.

  • ... but one wonders what's behind of this move ...

    How about doubling or tripling that $100M? RHAT is a volative stock that has some pretty big swings. If you time your purchase right sometime over the next couple of years you may be able to realize a pretty big gain. Linux is becoming more important (fwiw I'm not referring to the desktop) and Red Hat is well poised to benefit from that. I think it is a good medium term investment.

    Also to assume some sort of conspiracy is ignorant. Dell is a business.

  • He isn't buying stock (Score:3, Informative)

    by RealAlaskan ( 576404 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @12:05PM (#12478078) Homepage Journal
    debenture [investorwords.com]
    Unsecured debt backed only by the integrity of the borrower, not by collateral, and documented by an agreement called an indenture. One example is an unsecured bond.
    From TFA:
    Dell invested his own money in the Raleigh Linux software developer, taking the largest single chunk of $600 million in debentures offered by the company in January 2004.
    These seem to be a 0.5% convertable senior bond, so it's fairly safe and he gets paid to wait for the stock price to jump.

  • Big dreams mean big wins (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @12:09PM (#12478122) Homepage Journal
    When you've got multiple billions of dollars in liquid assets, investing one tenth of one of those billions in a company that you like is a no-brainer. Risk, shmisk.

    Michael Dell has been a capitalist his whole life, from selling newspaper subscriptions to selling PCs out of his dorm room. He's always been a risk-taker and an achiever. I'm not really impressed with him as a deep thinker, from the few interviews and articles I've seen him do, but that's not his area.

    His goal was becoming the top PC maker, even bigger than IBM. His victory in that arena is complete, having driven IBM out of the PC market. Those of us who have watching the computer scene since the '70s should think back to what IBM was then.

    Suppose a new kind of car were invented that a guy in his garage could make, and one of those garage hackers figured out how to mass-market his vehicle. If he did it so well that GM decided to get out of the consumer market altogether, that would rival what Dell did.

    So what do he do when at 40 having accomplished what seemed like an impossible goal? I'd want my life to mean something besides business, but I'm not him.

    I suspect you'll see Dell try to accomplish some new "impossible" goal, whether it's space exploration, a cancer cure, seawater desalination, selling electric cars, or whatever.

    I don't know, because I don't dream big enough.
  • I was bored this morning so I decided to check into the facts of this. I am no lawyer or financial expert, but if this even exists -- it looks more like a loan than an investment.

  • Not sure why you felt compelled to include the Google News link in the post. But I suspect that is the kind of thing that puts Google News on shaky ground with content providers.

    MSNBC prints a story, and you arguably give more credit (by putting the link first) for that content to Google News.
  • Even though Linux is free, government and educational agencies aren't likely to jump to a free solution without some promise of support, and since Redhat seems to be the leading Linux distro offering support (at rates way below Microsoft) they are poised to be the next big thing. Not to mention that when typical computer users hear Linux, they probably think of Redhat before a lot of others, i.e. Redhat "is" Linux to a lot of people.

    Investors invest because they want to see a return on their investments.

  • "Via google news [google.com], whilst [worldwidewords.org] doing butt-clenches [thevillager.com], feeling guilty [sco.com] having had [naturalbiology.com] extra marmalade [google.com] on my toast [roxio.com] this morning, I found an article [learnthenet.com] at MSNBC [bbspot.com]...

    In future, please just give us the relevant links. The editors around here are so bad they don't even notice people giving out about them. Editors sans narcissism, what will they think of next?

  • Michael Dell, Dell's founder and chairman, has droped $100M into Red Hat

    drope, tr. v. [Scatterhead English, from drop]:

    1. To refuse to accept [linuxquestions.org], as in packets.

    2. To apply [estateangels.co.uk] for a mortgage [intelligen...hecaire.ca]

    3. To host a web page [cylex.de] but only in German.

    4. To aspire to contribute to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] but only in French.

    --Rob

  • Linux GUI (Score:2, Interesting)

    by guildsolutions ( 707603 )
    what we need is for RedHat to use this 100m to develop a standard GUI such as apple's OS X that can mainstream linux into the desktop arena. The window managers now for linux are pathetic compared to apple's desktop management. This could fund a very new and very large step for Redhat and linux in general. does anyone know when microsoft is set to sue over this, claiming the money was actually moneies that was laundred by SCO?

  • Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stormwatch ( 703920 ) <`moc.liamtoh' `ta' `oarigogirdor'> on Monday May 09, 2005 @01:40PM (#12479142) Homepage
    Dude, you're getting Red Hat!

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