We do not control and may be unable to predict the future course of open-source technologies, including those used in our offering, which could reduce the market appeal of our offering and damage our reputation.
This is a really cool risk factor that I've never seen before in an S-1, exciting that more big public companies are willing to accept the risk reward that comes with contributing to open source:
If open-source software programmers, many of whom we do not employ, or our own internal programmers do not continue to use, contribute to and enhance the open-source technologies that we rely on, the market appeal of our offering may be reduced, which could harm our reputation, diminish our brand and result in decreased revenue. We also cannot predict whether further developments and enhancements to these open-source technologies will be available from reliable alternative sources. If the open-source technologies that we rely on become unavailable, we may need to invest in researching and developing alternative technologies.
Their quarterly reports always have similar wording, to wit:
"If open source software programmers, most of whom we do not employ, do not continue to develop and enhance open source technologies, we may be unable to develop new technologies, adequately enhance our existing technologies or meet customer requirements for innovation, quality and price.
We rely to a significant degree on a number of largely informal communities of independent open source software programmers to develop and enhance our enterprise technologies. For example, Linus Torvalds, a prominent open source software developer, and a relatively small group of software engineers, many of whom are not employed by us, are primarily responsible for the development and evolution of the Linux kernel, which is the heart of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system. If these groups of programmers fail to adequately further develop and enhance open source technologies, we would have to rely on other parties to develop and enhance our offerings or we would need to develop and enhance our offerings with our own resources. We cannot predict whether further developments and enhancements to these technologies would be available from reliable alternative sources. In either event, our development expenses could be increased and our technology release and upgrade schedules could be delayed. Moreover, if third-party software programmers fail to adequately further develop and enhance open source technologies, the development and adoption of these technologies could be stifled and our offerings could become less competitive. Delays in developing, completing or delivering new or enhanced offerings could result in delayed or reduced revenue for those offerings and could also adversely affect customer acceptance of those offerings."
"If open source software programmers, most of whom we do not employ, do not continue to develop and enhance open source technologies, our development expenses could be increased and our product release and upgrade schedules could be delayed."
This is a really cool risk factor that I've never seen before in an S-1, exciting that more big public companies are willing to accept the risk reward that comes with contributing to open source:
If open-source software programmers, many of whom we do not employ, or our own internal programmers do not continue to use, contribute to and enhance the open-source technologies that we rely on, the market appeal of our offering may be reduced, which could harm our reputation, diminish our brand and result in decreased revenue. We also cannot predict whether further developments and enhancements to these open-source technologies will be available from reliable alternative sources. If the open-source technologies that we rely on become unavailable, we may need to invest in researching and developing alternative technologies.