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As we go to press, it still isn't possible to make full sense out of the Red Hat IPO. But we can report that the folks at Prosthetic Monkey Consulting (http://www.prosthetic-monkey.com/) have used some expert Python to wring maximum irony out of Red Hat's instant billions, through a web instrument called the Red Hat Wealth Monitor (http://prosthetic-monkey.com/RHWM/).

“If you use this information to flame Red Hat, then you're misusing it,” writes Kendall G. Clark, the author of the site. Bettew to lightly roast the company, which the RHWM site does rather well. To wit:

Last updated on Wed, Sept. 15 1999 12:10:00. Updated every 15 minutes during NASDAQ trading. Trading at $96.84375 US:

Not bad for free software, huh?

Credit where due. “We've obviously stolen Phil Greenspun's idea for the Bill Gates Wealth Clock (http://www.webho.com/WealthClock/) and applied it to Red Hat,” Clark writes. “We share Phil's opinion about Bill Gates, but we're not anti-Red Hat. We just want to see them spreading some of their newfound wealth—which is not equal to their market capitalization—around to those who helped them acquire it; particularly in the form of R & D funds to the Community.”

We might add that on this same day (August 23rd), the Bill Gates Wealth Clock put the man's worth at $97.6121 billion US. That sum, however, was recently reduced by a chunk of change given to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, making it, at $17.1 billion US, the largest charitable foundation in the United States.

So just how much did Mr. Bill give? Try $6 billion US. Or, by today's reckoning, just a few hundred million more than one Red Hat.

—Doc Searls