Simple really. It would take more money, in the long run, to interview and
hire programmers, train them if necessary, develop your brand, and market
it. Buying a company gives you instant access to all it has, including brand
recognition. AOL has been in the business of buying companies that are good
alternatives to M$ software. Netscape vs IE, Winamp vs Media Player, now
Linux vs Windows. There are several excellent posts on the subject over at
slashdot.

Rich

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kendric Beachey" <ak@kc.rr.com>
To: <kclug@kclug.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2002 9:38 PM
Subject: Re: AOL in negotiations to buy Red Hat

> On Saturday, 19 January 2002 18:48, rcb@kc.rr.com wrote:
> > http://www.msnbc.com/news/690661.asp?0si=-
>
> Huh.  Why spend a big chunk of change buying Red Hat the company when you
can
> download Red Hat the software for free, and do about anything you want
with
> it?
>
> --
> Kendric Beachey
> ak@kc.rr.com
>
> DVD decryption in seven lines of Perl code:
>
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$t=255;@t=map{$_%16or$t^=$c
^=(
>
$m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110;$t^=(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%
16
> -2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)[$_%8]}(16..271);if((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48)
{$h
>
=5;$_=unxb24,join"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$
> d=unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])<<9|ord$b[3];$d=$d8^($f=$t&($d12^$d4^
> $d^$d/8))<<17,$e=$e8^($t&($g=($q=$e14&7^$e)^$q*8^$q<<6))<<9,$_=$t[$_]^
> (($h=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval
>
>

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