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Red Hat
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In computing, Red Hat, Inc. is a company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1995, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide. In 2008, Red Hat was one of the hundred largest software companies in the world.
Red Hat has become associated to a large extent with its enterprise operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux and with the acquisition of open-source enterprise middleware vendor JBoss.
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Encyclopedia
In computing, Red Hat, Inc. is a company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1995, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide. In 2008, Red Hat was one of the hundred largest software companies in the world.
Red Hat has become associated to a large extent with its enterprise operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux and with the acquisition of open-source enterprise middleware vendor JBoss. Red Hat provides operating-system platforms along with middleware, applications, and management products, as well as support, training, and consulting services.
History
In 1993 Bob Young incorporated the ACC Corporation, a catalog business that sold Linux and UNIX software accessories. In 1994 Marc Ewing created his own Linux distribution, which he named Red Hat Linux. Ewing released it in October, and it became known as the Halloween release. Young bought Ewing's business in 1995, and the two merged to become Red Hat Software, with Young serving as chief executive officer (CEO).
Red Hat went public on August 11, 1999, the eighth-biggest first-day gain in the history of Wall Street. Matthew Szulik succeeded Bob Young as CEO in November of that year.
On November 15, 1999, Red Hat acquired Cygnus Solutions. Cygnus provided commercial support for free software and housed maintainers of GNU software products such as the GNU Debugger and GNU Binutils. One of the founders of Cygnus, Michael Tiemann, became the chief technical officer of Red Hat and the vice president of open source affairs. Later Red Hat acquired WireSpeed, C2Net and Hell's Kitchen Systems.
In February 2000, InfoWorld awarded Red Hat its fourth consecutive "Operating System Product of the Year" award for Red Hat Linux 6.1. Red Hat acquired Planning Technologies, Inc in 2001 and in 2004 AOL's iPlanet directory and certificate-server software.
Red Hat moved its headquarters from Durham, NC, to N.C. State University's Centennial Campus in Raleigh, North Carolina in February 2002. In the following month Red Hat introduced the first enterprise-class Linux operating system: Red Hat Advanced Server, later re-named Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Dell, IBM, HP and Oracle Corporation announced their support of the platform.
In December 2005 CIO Insight magazine conducted its annual "Vendor Value Survey", in which Red Hat ranked #1 in value for the second year in a row. Red Hat stock became part of the NASDAQ-100 on December 19, 2005.
Red Hat acquired open-source middleware provider JBoss on June 5, 2006 and JBoss became a division of Red Hat. In 2007 Red Hat acquired MetaMatrix and made an agreement with Exadel to distribute its software. On September 18, 2006, Red Hat released the Red Hat Application Stack, the first certified stack integrating JBoss technology. On December 12, 2006, Red Hat moved from NASDAQ (RHAT) to the New York Stock Exchange (RHT).
On March 15, 2007, Red Hat released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and in June acquired Mobicents. On March 13, 2008, Red Hat acquired Amentra, a provider of systems integration services for service-oriented architecture, business process management, systems development and enterprise data services. Amentra operates as an independent Red Hat company.
Fedora Project
Red Hat sponsors the Fedora Project, a community-supported open-source project which aims to promote the rapid progress of free and open-source software and content. Fedora aims for rapid innovation using open processes and public forums.
The Fedora Project Board, which comprises community leaders and representatives of Red Hat, leads the project and steers the direction of the project and of Fedora, the Linux distribution it develops. Red Hat employees work with the code alongside community members, and many innovations within the Fedora Project make their way into new releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Business model
Red Hat partly operates on a professional open-source business model based on open code, development within a community, professional quality assurance services, and subscription-based customer support. They produce open-source code, so more programmers can make further adaptations and improvements.
Red Hat sells subscriptions for the support, training, and integration services that help customers in using open-source software. Customers pay one set price for unlimited access to services such as Red Hat Network and up to 24x7 support.
Programs and projects
One Laptop per Child
Red Hat engineers work with the One Laptop per Child initiative (a non-profit organization established by members of the MIT Media Lab) to design and produce an inexpensive laptop and provide every child in the world with access to open communication, open knowledge, and open learning. The XO-1 laptop, the machine of this project, runs a slimmed-down version of Fedora as its operating system.
Mugshot
Red Hat sponsors Mugshot, an open project building "a live social experience" based around entertainment. It refocuses technological thinking from objects (files, folders, etc) to activities, like web browsing or music sharing. These topics form the focus of the first two features in Mugshot, Web Swarm and Music Radar. These had already started before the announcement of the project at the 2006 Red Hat Summit.
Dogtail
Dogtail, an open-source automated graphical user interface (GUI) test framework initially developed by Red Hat, consists of free software released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is written in Python. It allows developers to build and test their applications. Red Hat announced the release of Dogtail at the 2006 Red Hat Summit.
Red Hat Magazine
Red Hat produces the Red Hat Magazine as an online news publication. It brings together issues of interest from inside and outside the company, focusing on in-depth discussion of the development and application of open source technologies. It covers news from Red Hat and the Fedora Project, it updates readers on public licensing and the Creative Commons, and it features interviews with some industry leaders and open-source people.
The company originally produced a newsletter called Under the Brim. Wide Open magazine first appeared in March 2004 as a means for Red Hat to share technical content with subscribers on a regular basis. Under the Brim and Wide Open magazine merged in November 2004 to become Red Hat Magazine.
Red Hat Exchange
In 2007 Red Hat announced that it had reached an agreement with some free software and open source (FOSS) companies that allowed it to make a distribution portal called Red Hat Exchange, reselling FOSS software with the original branding intact.
Utilities and tools
Over and above Red Hat's major products and acquisitions, Red Hat programmers have produced software programming tools and utilities to supplement standard Unix and Linux software. Some of these Red Hat "products" have found their way from specifically Red Hat operating environments via open-source channels to a wider community. Such utilities include:
- Disk Druid (for disk partitioning)
- rpm (for package management)
- sos (for gathering information on system hardware and configuration)
- sysreport (gathers system hardware and configuration details)
The Red Hat web site has a list of their major involvements in free and open source software projects.
Competitors
Red Hat's main competitors include the companies Canonical Ltd., IBM, Mandriva, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems and Xandros, along with the communities of Debian and FreeBSD.
See also
External links
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