OT: The rubber sword of Damocles

[Marc Schwartz]

Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Friday 03 November 2006 05:18, Andy Green wrote:
>> Michael Wiktowy wrote:
>>> Just finished watching the Novell/MS press conference and it looks
>>> like MS is trying to spread the software patent bogeyman again (now
>>> that their ploy with SCO isn't quite panning out as they imagined) but
>>> it seems to me due to the complex entanglement of upstream
>> Complex entanglement of people all based in Utah, too.
>>
> There must be something in the water in Utah.
> 
>>> contributers, they would have a hard time pursuing any IP rights
>>> against anyone in the Open Source community now ... including Red Hat.
>>>
>>> Here's to hoping that Novell is acting in the greater good on the Open
>>> Source community rather than self interests.
>> Bah everyone is running around trying to screw RHAT at the moment, we
>> are expected to believe that the recent kicks to the belly are not
>> coming from the same foot?
>>
>> http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=NOVL&t=3m&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=RHAT,ORA
>>
>> It's a compliment that you have been effective when attackers start
>> coming out of the woodwork.  I hope RHAT muse on what they were doing
>> that prompted such a schoolyard gang to form and crank the volume up on
>> it to 11.
>>
> Yeah, well that page doesn't show RHAT in such rosy terms.  Its a neat page 
> though except for the builtin delays, it almost makes you think you are 
> watching in real time.  I'll bookmark it just for grins.


If you want a better comparison, this one provides an insight into the 
changes over the past two years against the Dow and NASDAQ:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=NOVL&t=2y&l=off&z=l&q=l&c=RHAT,ORA,%5EIXIC,%5EDJI

which shows:

1. RHAT has been on a slide since May 06 and is now back to where it was 
about a year ago

2. NOVL has been on a slide since Feb 06

3. ORCL has been relatively flat since Feb 06 with a general trend downwards

Notwithstanding the recent trends, both RHAT and ORCL are outperforming 
the markets generally, while NOVL is generally underperforming.

The key question is whether or not RHAT recovers, presuming a market 
over-reaction to the recent ORCL/NOVL news or if there continues to be 
downward pressure on the price.  If the latter, it makes RHAT an 
attractive takeover target.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz