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Has someone confused revenue with profit?Has someone confused revenue with profit?Posted Apr 3, 2012 17:59 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)In reply to: A hundred thousand thanks for a billion, anyway by tpo Parent article: Whitehurst: A billion thanks to the open source community from Red Hat Migro isn't giving 1% of revenue away; they would go bankrupt if they did. Red Hat has not made a billion dollars in profit; that is the revenue number, most of which was used to pay expenses (employee salaries and benefits, equipment costs, and other expenses). Their gifts to the free software community have been far larger, for example, all the work on glibc, GCC, and the rest of the GNU toolchain that has been assigned to the FSF has cost Red Hat far more than $100K.
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No, they haven't Posted Apr 3, 2012 23:55 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
You can't even spell their name, but you want us to believe that unlike the authorities in the country where they operate, who have access to all their financial records, you're an authority on the solvency of co-operatives running Swiss supermarkets ?
Migros isn't going to go bankrupt. If for some reason the conditions in their marketplace made it tough to continue to spend 1% of revenue on community projects they could go to their (millions of) members and seek authority to discontinue this practice or put it on hold for a period. But in reality even with foreign for-profit discount supermarkets entering the Swiss market there seems no likelihood of a serious threat to Migros. It is well-loved by locals.
Your estimation would be wrong even for a for-profit corporation running supermarkets. A well run supermarket can easily clear 1% profit, which means if they gave 1% of revenue away they'd be close to break even. But supermarket chains have routinely operated with as much as 1-2% losses without being in danger of creditors seeking administration, let alone bankruptcy. IIRC Aldi, in my country, went from -1% to +1.5% in twelve months under new management and even in financial papers it was never front page news.
Has someone confused revenue with profit? Posted Apr 4, 2012 14:59 UTC (Wed) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
You are right
2011 turnover: CHF21045m Culture percent: CHF117.6m
so it seems to be more like 0.5% of their turnover ;). Still, beats any other org.
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