Acidus wrote:
] ] In the interest of fair play, you might point out that you
] are
] ] friends with the guy
]
] In the Interest of fair play, I should point out that
] inignoct, Rattle, ryan, Elonka and others had no idea who I
] was at the time, and many still haven't met me. The only
] Memestreamer who knew me was Decius, who I met at the
] conference. I won't pollute my ego and think I can cause so
] many people to react to something a certain way. I think the
] numbers of people who reacted to what BB did and the strength
] at which did they speaks more about what occured then I could.
]
]
] ] BTW, I'm a former Blackboard employee. Worked there four
] ] years. Am I proud of everything Blackboard has done over the
]
] ] years? Nope. But it's a good company populated with plenty
] of
] ] decent free-thinking people. Particularly the techies, some
] of
] ] the most fiercely independent and idealistic folks I've ever
]
] ] met, and a group with whom your hacker friend would probably
]
] ] fit right in.
]
] I concur you shouldn't fault the whole company. I'm sure there
] are cool folks there. However the executives, not Bill the
] Engineer or Sally in accounting made the choices on how to
] react, and executives have the most to gain from an IPO. For
] that reason I hope it fails. The lawsuit changed me very much:
] certain beliefs I've always had about motives and conduct were
] completely destroyed. After several talks with BB executives,
] I still cannot fathom these people's greed. It and it alone
] drives their actions, and that utterly sickens me. A failed
] IPO would deny they what they want, because believe me, they
] care nothing about Sally or Bill.

Seems unlikely that they will have a failed IPO. Their only public competitor, ecollege.com is valued at a ridiculous $20/share right now and has about 2% of the market share. Blackboard has an order of magnitude more market share. I expect Blackboard to go straight up and ecollege to drop. Ecollege investors are nuts, I think they don't realize that major competetors Blackboard, WebCT and Desire2Learn are dominating the market and that ecollege is merely a footnote. The fact that ecollege stock price is so high right now points to the fact that investors want to get into the lucrative elearning market.

RE: Blackboard Looks Likely To Go Public