[Am-info] AOL in Negotiations to Buy Red Hat

[Paul Rickard]

========== On 2002.01.20 08:14 PM, Hans Reiser typed: ============

>I decided that it is paranoid to think that Steve Case and Bill Gates 
>cooked up some backroom deal in which he bought Netscape to slowly kill 
>it.  The thought did occur to me at the time of the deal, but I think it 
>didn't happen.  Occam's razor and all that.  It would have been 
>deliciously evil for Gates to pull off though:-)....

    I had my doubts about the theory at first, but as time goes on I'm 
seeing fewer and fewer reasons to doubt it. Things about that deal just 
don't add up. SOMEBODY has to be paranoid, I suppose. Either AOL is so 
$@*) stupid it doesn't deserve to remain in business, or Microsoft made a 
deal with them. I owned Netscape stock at the end (I work minimum near 
wage now, but I did pretty good a few years ago) and watched the whole 
thing go down. AOL overpaid for that company just to get the Web site and 
then abandon everything else. Sun came out better in the buyout deal than 
AOL did. Netscape's demise makes more sense than the supposed RedHat 
deal, but not much more.



======== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign =======
--------------------------------[ Http://www.msboycott.com ]-----------

  "Instead of worrying about whether or not the government will stop
   Microsoft from innovating in the future, the head honchos in Redmond
   ought to spend some energy trying to figure out what force has
   prevented them from innovating over the past decade."
       -InfoWorld Editor Nicholas Petreley - December 20, 1999