Its an interesting concept for sure and not without merit in my
opinion. I think the 1 share figure is enough to get you into the
meeting and in line to ask a question, but as you said the $2k allows
you to make proposals.
I am not sure I would want to dump $2k into a company that I was having
problems with :)
But getting up in front of all the other shareholders for [insert cost
of one share] and dropping your one question "Why did you alienate
[insert number] customers by simply not providing documentation?"
Unfortunately, the cost of one share is trivial compared to travel and
lodging expenses to attend the meeting. But then its out in the open...
But I do think you are onto something... perhaps a master list of
companies that play ball nicely with these efforts. Set up a specific
criteria and just add them to the list. I am sure (well pretty sure)
it would not turn the financial world upside down, but if it creates
enough of a murmur that companies weigh the possible benefits of this
sort of exposure versus just not doing anything. But then again,
Adaptec got slashdotted - thats gotta hurt too.
I'm pretty new to obsd, but I've been in linux for years so open source
is not new to me. I am even more impressed with obsd after this whole
situation than I was before (and I was impressed enough to start
phasing over servers, firewalls and have started planning for a 8
segment router based on obsd). I'm not the gurus most of you probably
are - but damn this is nice.
Bill
On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 12:54:22 +0100
Michael Hamerski <lists@blurbfly.com> wrote:
> Bill Chmura wrote:
> > I believe you only need one share to get into the annual shareholders
> > meeting or whatever they call it... ala "roger and me"
> >
>
> For those interested, I found this paper by the Jewish War Veterans
> Association on shareholder activism:
>
> http://www.jwv.org/events/viaguidetoactionpartB.pdf
>
> They also target adaptec ;)
>
> It's an interesting read. That's where my previous figure of $2k in
> shares is from. Apparently, the time-frame for being noticed is long,
> but things have been achieved.
>
> Perhaps in the long-term, organizing something like a Free Software
> Investment Action Fund wouldn't be so bad, I'm sure there are people who
> care about the issue, hold stock in recalcitrant companies, and would
> sign over their voting rights to a worthy cause.
>
> Hell, just setting such a beastie up would probably coerce a few vendors.
>
> Oh, and if you work for a company that's a direct competitor to adaptec,
> now is probably the time to give out tons of docs and get good press.
>
> mike
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