Red Hat
Encyclopedia
Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500
company in the free and open source software
sector, and a major Linux distribution
vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina
with satellite offices worldwide.
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.
Red Hat creates, maintains, and contributes to many free software projects and has also acquired several proprietary
software packages and released their source code
under mostly GNU GPL while holding copyright under single commercial entity and selling looser licenses. , Red Hat was the largest corporate contributor to the Linux kernel
.
business
that sold Linux and UNIX
software accessories. In 1994 Marc Ewing
created his own Linux distribution, which he named Red Hat Linux
(Ewing had worn his grandfather's red lacrosse
hat while attending Carnegie Mellon University
). Ewing released the software 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, achieving the eighth-biggest first-day gain in the history of Wall Street
. Matthew Szulik
succeeded Bob Young as CEO in December 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 Red Hat Linux 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. On September 18, 2006, Red Hat released the Red Hat Application Stack, their first stack that integrates the JBoss technology and of which is certified by other well-known software vendors. On December 12, 2006, Red Hat moved from NASDAQ
(RHAT) to the New York Stock Exchange
(RHT). In 2007 Red Hat acquired MetaMatrix
and made an agreement with Exadel to distribute its software.
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.
On July 27, 2009, Red Hat replaced CIT Group in Standard and Poor’s 500 stock index
, a diversified index of 500 leading companies of the U.S. economy. This has been reported as a major milestone for Linux.
On December 15, 2009, it was reported that Red Hat will pay $8.8 million to settle a class action lawsuit related to the restatement of financial results from July 2004. The suit had been pending in a U.S. District Court in North Carolina. Red Hat reached the proposed settlement agreement and recorded a one-time charge of $8.8 million for the quarter that ended Nov. 30. The agreement is pending court approval.
On January 10, 2011, Red Hat announced that it would expand its headquarters in two phases, adding 540 employees to the Raleigh operation. The company will invest over $109 million. The state of North Carolina is offering up to $15 million in incentives. The second phase involves "expansion into new technologies such as software virtualization and technology cloud offerings".
On August 25, 2011, Red Hat announced it would move about 600 employees from the N.C. State Centennial Campus to Two Progress Plaza
downtown. Progress Energy plans to vacate the building by 2012 if its merger with Duke Energy
is completed. Red Hat also plans to rename the building.
The Fedora Project Board, which comprises community leader
s and representatives of Red Hat, lead
s 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
based on open code, development within a community, professional quality assurance
, 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 24/7
support.
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-1.5
laptop, the machine of this project, runs a slimmed-down version of Fedora
as its operating system.
, 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.
kernel in order to provide extra support for real-time computing
, together with middleware support for message broker
age and scheduling workload to local or remote virtual machine
s, grid
, and cloud
infrastructures. Red Hat now works with the Condor High-Throughput Computing System community and also provides support for the software.
community, highlighting how open source principles apply beyond software and technology. It covers topics such a business, education, government, law, health, and life, updates readers on public licensing and the Creative Commons
, and it features interviews with some industry
leader
s 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. The Under the Brim newsletter and Wide Open magazine merged in November 2004 to become Red Hat Magazine. Red Hat Magazine later became opensource.com.
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.
Platform as a Service
, supporting applications written in PHP, Perl, Python
, Ruby
, and JavaEE
. OpenShift is currently in developer beta, and is free of charge.
graphic drivers.
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:
The Red Hat web site lists the organization's major involvements in free and open-source software projects.
Community projects under the aegis of Red Hat include:
said that "the opening of [Red Hat India] is in response to the rapid adoption of Red Hat Linux in the subcontinent... Demand for open source solutions from the Indian markets is rising and Red Hat wants to play a major role in this region". Red Hat India has worked with local companies to enable adoption of open source technology in both government and education.
. Red Hat India's key channel partners include Efensys Technologies, Embee Software, Allied Digital Services, and Softcell Technologies. Key distributors listed by it include Integra Microsystems, Ingram Micro
, GT Enterprises, and Sonata Software
.
based operating system division of Delix Computer, a German
computer company, on July 30, 1999. Red Hat acquired Cygnus Solutions
, a company that provided commercial support for free software
, on January 11, 2000. Michael Tiemann
, co-founder of Cygnus, served as the chief technical officer
of Red Hat after the acquisition. On June 5, 2006, Red Hat acquired open source
middleware
provider JBoss
for $420 million and integrated it as its own division of Red Hat.
On December 14, 1998, Red Hat made its first divestment, in which parts of the company are sold to another company, when Intel and Netscape
acquired an undisclosed minority stake. The next year, on March 9, 1999, Compaq
, IBM
, Dell
and Novell
each acquired undisclosed minority stakes in Red Hat. The company's largest acquisition was Cygnus Solutions in January 2000 for $674 million. Red Hat made the most acquisitions in 2000 with five: Cygnus Solutions, Bluecurve
, Wirespeed Communications, Hell's Kitchen Systems, and C2Net
.
, IBM
, Mandriva
, Microsoft
, Novell
, and Oracle Corporation
, along with the communities of Debian
and FreeBSD
.
S&P 500
The S&P 500 is a free-float capitalization-weighted index published since 1957 of the prices of 500 large-cap common stocks actively traded in the United States. The stocks included in the S&P 500 are those of large publicly held companies that trade on either of the two largest American stock...
company in the free and open source software
Free and open source software
Free and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
sector, and a major Linux distribution
Linux distribution
A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like operating systems built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions are operating systems including a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players, and database applications...
vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina
Raleigh, North Carolina
Raleigh is the capital and the second largest city in the state of North Carolina as well as the seat of Wake County. Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak trees. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city's 2010 population was 403,892, over an area of , making Raleigh...
with satellite offices worldwide.
Red Hat has become associated to a large extent with its enterprise operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux-based operating system developed by Red Hat and targeted toward the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86, x86-64, Itanium, PowerPC and IBM System z, and desktop versions for x86 and x86-64...
and with the acquisition of open-source enterprise middleware vendor JBoss
JBoss (company)
JBoss is a division of Red Hat, Inc.. It specializes in open-source middleware software.The company profits from a service-based business model. JBoss employ a Professional Open Source business model where the core developers of projects make a living and offer their services...
. Red Hat provides operating-system platforms along with middleware
Middleware
Middleware is computer software that connects software components or people and their applications. The software consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact...
, applications, and management products, as well as support, training, and consulting services.
Red Hat creates, maintains, and contributes to many free software projects and has also acquired several proprietary
Proprietary software
Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...
software packages and released their source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
under mostly GNU GPL while holding copyright under single commercial entity and selling looser licenses. , Red Hat was the largest corporate contributor to the Linux kernel
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
.
History
In 1993 Bob Young incorporated the ACC Corporation, a catalogMail order
Mail order is a term which describes the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote method such as through a telephone call or web site. Then, the products are delivered to the customer...
business
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...
that sold Linux and UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
software accessories. In 1994 Marc Ewing
Marc Ewing
Marc Ewing is the creator and originator of the Red Hat brand of software, most notably the Red Hat range of Linux operating system distributions. He was involved in the 86open project in the mid-90s....
created his own Linux distribution, which he named Red Hat Linux
Red Hat Linux
Red Hat Linux, assembled by the company Red Hat, was a popular Linux based operating system until its discontinuation in 2004.Red Hat Linux 1.0 was released on November 3, 1994...
(Ewing had worn his grandfather's red lacrosse
Lacrosse
Lacrosse is a team sport of Native American origin played using a small rubber ball and a long-handled stick called a crosse or lacrosse stick, mainly played in the United States and Canada. It is a contact sport which requires padding. The head of the lacrosse stick is strung with loose mesh...
hat while attending Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
). Ewing released the software 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
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
(CEO).
Red Hat went public
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
on August 11, 1999, achieving the eighth-biggest first-day gain in the history of Wall Street
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
. Matthew Szulik
Matthew Szulik
Matthew J. Szulik - past chairman of Red Hat, leader of some other technology companies, such as Interleaf and MapInfo for more than 20 years. Szulik had also held the titles of chief executive officer and president of Red Hat, but resigned from these positions on 2007-12-20...
succeeded Bob Young as CEO in December of that year.
On November 15, 1999, Red Hat acquired Cygnus Solutions
Cygnus Solutions
Cygnus Solutions, originally Cygnus Support, was founded in 1989 by John Gilmore, Michael Tiemann and David Henkel-Wallace to provide commercial support for free software...
. Cygnus provided commercial support for free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
and housed maintainers of GNU
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...
software products such as the GNU Debugger
GNU Debugger
The GNU Debugger, usually called just GDB and named gdb as an executable file, is the standard debugger for the GNU software system. It is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, Free Pascal, Fortran, Java...
and GNU Binutils. One of the founders of Cygnus, Michael Tiemann
Michael Tiemann
Michael Tiemann is Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat Inc, as well as President of the Open Source Initiative. He previously was the Chief Technical Officer of Red Hat...
, became the chief technical officer
Chief technical officer
A chief technology officer is an executive-level position in a company or other entity whose occupant is focused on scientific and technological issues within an organization....
of Red Hat and the vice president of open source affairs. Later Red Hat acquired WireSpeed, C2Net
C2Net
C2Net was an Internet cryptography company founded by Sameer Parekh, which was sold to Red Hat in 2000. It was best known for its Stronghold secure webserver software....
and Hell's Kitchen Systems.
In February 2000, InfoWorld
InfoWorld
InfoWorld is an information technology online media and events business operating under the umbrella of InfoWorld Media Group, a division of IDG...
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
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
's iPlanet
IPlanet
iPlanet was a product brand that was used jointly by Sun Microsystems and Netscape Communications Corporation when delivering software and services as part of a non-exclusive cross marketing deal that was also known as "A Sun|Netscape Alliance"....
directory and certificate-server software.
Raleigh, North Carolina
Raleigh is the capital and the second largest city in the state of North Carolina as well as the seat of Wake County. Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak trees. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city's 2010 population was 403,892, over an area of , making Raleigh...
in February 2002. In the following month Red Hat introduced Red Hat Linux Advanced Server, later re-named Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux-based operating system developed by Red Hat and targeted toward the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86, x86-64, Itanium, PowerPC and IBM System z, and desktop versions for x86 and x86-64...
(RHEL). Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, HP
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
and Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
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
NASDAQ-100
The NASDAQ-100 is a stock market index of 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on the NASDAQ. It is a modified capitalization-weighted index. The companies' weights in the index are based on their market capitalizations, with certain rules capping the influence of the largest components...
on December 19, 2005.
Red Hat acquired open-source middleware provider JBoss
JBoss (company)
JBoss is a division of Red Hat, Inc.. It specializes in open-source middleware software.The company profits from a service-based business model. JBoss employ a Professional Open Source business model where the core developers of projects make a living and offer their services...
on June 5, 2006 and JBoss became a division of Red Hat. On September 18, 2006, Red Hat released the Red Hat Application Stack, their first stack that integrates the JBoss technology and of which is certified by other well-known software vendors. On December 12, 2006, Red Hat moved from NASDAQ
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
(RHAT) to the New York Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...
(RHT). In 2007 Red Hat acquired MetaMatrix
MetaMatrix
MetaMatrix is an U.S.-based technology company that created the first true Enterprise Information Integration software product to deliver data services for service-oriented architectures. Founded in 1998 as Quadrian and later renamed, MetaMatrix has development offices in St...
and made an agreement with Exadel to distribute its software.
On March 15, 2007, Red Hat released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and in June acquired Mobicents
Mobicents
The is suitable for creating, deploying and managing converged services and applications integrating voice, video and data across a range of IP and legacy communications networks. It includes the following key modules:...
. On March 13, 2008, Red Hat acquired Amentra, a provider of systems integration services for service-oriented architecture
Service-oriented architecture
In software engineering, a Service-Oriented Architecture is a set of principles and methodologies for designing and developing software in the form of interoperable services. These services are well-defined business functionalities that are built as software components that can be reused for...
, business process management
Business process management
Business process management is a holistic management approach focused on aligning all aspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology. BPM attempts to...
, systems development and enterprise data services. Amentra operates as an independent Red Hat company.
On July 27, 2009, Red Hat replaced CIT Group in Standard and Poor’s 500 stock index
S&P 500
The S&P 500 is a free-float capitalization-weighted index published since 1957 of the prices of 500 large-cap common stocks actively traded in the United States. The stocks included in the S&P 500 are those of large publicly held companies that trade on either of the two largest American stock...
, a diversified index of 500 leading companies of the U.S. economy. This has been reported as a major milestone for Linux.
On December 15, 2009, it was reported that Red Hat will pay $8.8 million to settle a class action lawsuit related to the restatement of financial results from July 2004. The suit had been pending in a U.S. District Court in North Carolina. Red Hat reached the proposed settlement agreement and recorded a one-time charge of $8.8 million for the quarter that ended Nov. 30. The agreement is pending court approval.
On January 10, 2011, Red Hat announced that it would expand its headquarters in two phases, adding 540 employees to the Raleigh operation. The company will invest over $109 million. The state of North Carolina is offering up to $15 million in incentives. The second phase involves "expansion into new technologies such as software virtualization and technology cloud offerings".
On August 25, 2011, Red Hat announced it would move about 600 employees from the N.C. State Centennial Campus to Two Progress Plaza
Two Progress Plaza
Two Progress Plaza is a skyscraper in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was completed in 2004 at a cost of $100 million as a headquarters for Progress Energy Inc and has 19 floors and of space. It is owned by J.P. Morgan Trust Co....
downtown. Progress Energy plans to vacate the building by 2012 if its merger with Duke Energy
Duke Energy
Duke Energy , headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, is an energy company with assets in the United States, Canada and Latin America.-Overview:...
is completed. Red Hat also plans to rename the building.
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 leader
Community leader
A Community Leader is a designation, often by secondary sources , for a person who is perceived to represent a community. A simple way to understand community leadership is to see it as leadership in, for and by the community...
s and representatives of Red Hat, lead
Leadership
Leadership has been described as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task". Other in-depth definitions of leadership have also emerged.-Theories:...
s the project and steers the direction of the project and of Fedora
Fedora (operating system)
Fedora is a RPM-based, general purpose collection of software, including an operating system based on the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat...
, the Linux distribution
Linux distribution
A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like operating systems built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions are operating systems including a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players, and database applications...
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-sourceProfessional open-source
Professional open-source is an open source software business model where an open source software vendor generates revenue from paid professional services, maintenance and support provided along with the software...
business model
Business model
A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value...
based on open code, development within a community, professional quality assurance
Quality Assurance
Quality assurance, or QA for short, is the systematic monitoring and evaluation of the various aspects of a project, service or facility to maximize the probability that minimum standards of quality are being attained by the production process...
, and subscription-based customer support
Customer support
Customer support is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product....
. 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
Red Hat Network
Red Hat Network is a family of systems management services operated by Red Hat that makes updates, patches, and bug fixes of packages included within Red Hat Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux available to subscribers...
and up to 24/7
24/7
24/7 is an abbreviation which stands for "24 hours a day, 7 days a week", usually referring to a business or service available at all times without interruption...
support.
One Laptop per Child
Red Hat engineers work with the One Laptop per Child initiative (a non-profit organizationNon-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
established by members of the MIT Media Lab
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a laboratory of MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Devoted to research projects at the convergence of design, multimedia and technology, the Media Lab has been widely popularized since the 1990s by business and technology publications such as Wired and Red Herring for a...
) to design and produce an inexpensive laptop and provide every child in the world with access to open communication, open knowledge, and open learning
Open learning
Open learning is a teaching method that is, among others, founded on the work of Célestin Freinet and Maria Montessori.Open learning is supposed to allow pupils self-determined, independent and interest-guided learning....
. The XO-1.5
OLPC XO-1
The XO-1, previously known as the $100 Laptop, Children's Machine, and 2B1, is an inexpensive subnotebook computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world, to provide them with access to knowledge, and opportunities to "explore, experiment and express...
laptop, the machine of this project, runs a slimmed-down version of Fedora
Fedora (operating system)
Fedora is a RPM-based, general purpose collection of software, including an operating system based on the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat...
as its operating system.
Mugshot
Red Hat sponsors Mugshot, an open project building "a live social experience" based on 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. The original Mugshot instance hosted by Red Hat has been removed, and mugshot.org redirects to Red Hat's website.Dogtail
DogtailDogtail
Dogtail is an open source GUI testing tool and automation framework written in Python. It is Linux-based and is packaged with well known GNU/Linux distributions such as Fedora. It uses accessibility technologies to communicate with desktop applications...
, an open-source automated graphical user interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
(GUI) test framework initially developed by Red Hat, consists of free software released under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
(GPL) and is written in Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
. It allows developers to build and test their applications. Red Hat announced the release of Dogtail at the 2006 Red Hat Summit.
MRG
Red Hat Enterprise MRG (Messaging, Real-time, and Grid) replaces the RHELRed Hat Enterprise Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux-based operating system developed by Red Hat and targeted toward the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86, x86-64, Itanium, PowerPC and IBM System z, and desktop versions for x86 and x86-64...
kernel in order to provide extra support for real-time computing
Real-time computing
In computer science, real-time computing , or reactive computing, is the study of hardware and software systems that are subject to a "real-time constraint"— e.g. operational deadlines from event to system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within strict time constraints...
, together with middleware support for message broker
Message broker
Message broker is an intermediary program which translates the language of a system from one internationally recognized language to another by way of a telecommunications medium.-Pattern:...
age and scheduling workload to local or remote virtual machine
Virtual machine
A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...
s, grid
Grid computing
Grid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...
, and cloud
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....
infrastructures. Red Hat now works with the Condor High-Throughput Computing System community and also provides support for the software.
opensource.com
Red Hat produces the online publication opensource.com. It brings together issues of interest from the open sourceOpen source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
community, highlighting how open source principles apply beyond software and technology. It covers topics such a business, education, government, law, health, and life, updates readers on public licensing and the Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
, and it features interviews with some industry
Computer industry
Computer industry is a collective term used to describe the whole range of businesses involved in developing computer software, designing computer hardware and computer networking infrastructures, the manufacture of computer components and the provision of information technology services.-See...
leader
Leadership
Leadership has been described as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task". Other in-depth definitions of leadership have also emerged.-Theories:...
s 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. The Under the Brim newsletter and Wide Open magazine merged in November 2004 to become Red Hat Magazine. Red Hat Magazine later became opensource.com.
Red Hat Exchange
In 2007 Red Hat announced that it had reached an agreement with some free softwareFree software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
and open source
Open-source software
Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...
(FOSS) companies that allowed it to make a distribution portal called Red Hat Exchange, reselling FOSS software with the original branding intact.
OpenShift
Red Hat operates OpenShift, a cloud computingCloud computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....
Platform as a Service
Platform as a service
Platform as a service is a category of cloud computing services that provide a computing platform and a solution stack as a service...
, supporting applications written in PHP, Perl, Python
Python
The Pythonidae, commonly known simply as pythons, from the Greek word python-πυθων, are a family of non-venomous snakes found in Africa, Asia and Australia. Among its members are some of the largest snakes in the world...
, Ruby
Ruby (programming language)
Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was first developed and designed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto...
, and JavaEE
Java Platform, Enterprise Edition
Java Platform, Enterprise Edition or Java EE is widely used platform for server programming in the Java programming language. The Java platform differs from the Java Standard Edition Platform in that it adds libraries which provide functionality to deploy fault-tolerant, distributed, multi-tier...
. OpenShift is currently in developer beta, and is free of charge.
Other Projects
Red Hat has some employees working full time on free and open source software projects, such as two full-time employees working on the free software radeon (David Airlie and Jerome Glisse) and one full-time employee working on the free software nouveauNouveau (graphics)
In computing, nouveau is a software project aiming to develop free software drivers for Nvidia graphics cards, by reverse engineering Nvidia's current proprietary drivers for Linux. This project by X.Org Foundation and freedesktop.org was initially based on the obfuscated 2D-only free and...
graphic drivers.
Utilities and tools
Over and above Red Hat's major products and acquisitions, Red Hat programmers have produced software programming-tools and utilitiesUtility software
Utility software is system software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize or maintain a computer. A single piece of utility software is usually called a utility or tool....
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)
- rpmRPM Package ManagerRPM Package Manager is a package management system. The name RPM variously refers to the .rpm file format, files in this format, software packaged in such files, and the package manager itself...
(for package management) - sosreport (gathers system hardware and configuration details)
- systemtapSystemTapIn computing, SystemTap is the primary scripting language and tool for dynamically instrumenting running production Linux operating systems...
(tracing tool for Linux kernels, developed in collaboration with IBM, Hitachi, Oracle and Intel. - NetworkManagerNetworkManagerNetwork Manager is a software utility aimed at simplifying the use of computer networks on Linux-based and other Unix-like operating systems.- Overview :...
The Red Hat web site lists the organization's major involvements in free and open-source software projects.
Community projects under the aegis of Red Hat include:
- the Pulp application for software-repositorySoftware repositoryA software repository is a storage location from which software packages may be retrieved and installed on a computer.- Discussion :Many software publishers and other organizations maintain servers on the Internet for this purpose, either free of charge or for a subscription fee...
management.
Red Hat India
Red Hat, Inc created its subsidiary Red Hat India to deliver Red Hat software, support, and services to customers in India. Colin Tenwick, vice president and general manager of Red Hat EMEAEurope, the Middle East and Africa
Europe, the Middle East and Africa, usually abbreviated to EMEA, is a regional designation used for government, marketing and business purposes...
said that "the opening of [Red Hat India] is in response to the rapid adoption of Red Hat Linux in the subcontinent... Demand for open source solutions from the Indian markets is rising and Red Hat wants to play a major role in this region". Red Hat India has worked with local companies to enable adoption of open source technology in both government and education.
Distribution network
Red Hat India says it currently has a distribution network of more than 70 channel partners spanning 27 cities across IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. Red Hat India's key channel partners include Efensys Technologies, Embee Software, Allied Digital Services, and Softcell Technologies. Key distributors listed by it include Integra Microsystems, Ingram Micro
Ingram Micro
Ingram Micro, Inc. is a Fortune 100 company and the world’s largest information technology distributor, providing sales, marketing and logistics services for the IT industry in all corners of the globe.-Overview:...
, GT Enterprises, and Sonata Software
Sonata Software
Sonata Software Limited, is an IT consulting services company headquartered in Bangalore, India. Sonata's customers are located across the US, Europe, Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. Its key business segments include Product Engineering , Enterprise IT and Travel, Transportation and...
.
Mergers and acquisitions
Red Hat's first major acquisition was Delix Computer GmbH-Linux Div, the LinuxLinux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
based operating system division of Delix Computer, a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
computer company, on July 30, 1999. Red Hat acquired Cygnus Solutions
Cygnus Solutions
Cygnus Solutions, originally Cygnus Support, was founded in 1989 by John Gilmore, Michael Tiemann and David Henkel-Wallace to provide commercial support for free software...
, a company that provided commercial support for free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
, on January 11, 2000. Michael Tiemann
Michael Tiemann
Michael Tiemann is Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat Inc, as well as President of the Open Source Initiative. He previously was the Chief Technical Officer of Red Hat...
, co-founder of Cygnus, served as the chief technical officer
Chief technical officer
A chief technology officer is an executive-level position in a company or other entity whose occupant is focused on scientific and technological issues within an organization....
of Red Hat after the acquisition. On June 5, 2006, Red Hat acquired open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
middleware
Middleware
Middleware is computer software that connects software components or people and their applications. The software consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact...
provider JBoss
JBoss (company)
JBoss is a division of Red Hat, Inc.. It specializes in open-source middleware software.The company profits from a service-based business model. JBoss employ a Professional Open Source business model where the core developers of projects make a living and offer their services...
for $420 million and integrated it as its own division of Red Hat.
On December 14, 1998, Red Hat made its first divestment, in which parts of the company are sold to another company, when Intel and Netscape
Netscape
Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...
acquired an undisclosed minority stake. The next year, on March 9, 1999, Compaq
Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....
, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
and Novell
Novell
Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...
each acquired undisclosed minority stakes in Red Hat. The company's largest acquisition was Cygnus Solutions in January 2000 for $674 million. Red Hat made the most acquisitions in 2000 with five: Cygnus Solutions, Bluecurve
Bluecurve
Bluecurve is a desktop theme for GNOME and KDE created by the Red Hat Artwork project. The main aim of Bluecurve was to create a consistent look throughout the Linux environment, and provide support for various Freedesktop.org desktop standards...
, Wirespeed Communications, Hell's Kitchen Systems, and C2Net
C2Net
C2Net was an Internet cryptography company founded by Sameer Parekh, which was sold to Red Hat in 2000. It was best known for its Stronghold secure webserver software....
.
Acquisitions
| Date | Company | Business | Country | Value (USD) | References |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atomic Vision | Website Design | — | |||
| Delix Computer GmbH-Linux DivDelix Computer GmbH-Linux Div was acquired from Delix Computer. | Computers and software | — | |||
| Cygnus Solutions Cygnus Solutions Cygnus Solutions, originally Cygnus Support, was founded in 1989 by John Gilmore, Michael Tiemann and David Henkel-Wallace to provide commercial support for free software... |
Software | $674,444,000 | |||
| Bluecurve | IT Information technology Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications... management software |
$37,107,000 | |||
| Wirespeed Communications | Internet software | $83,963,000 | |||
| Hell's Kitchen Systems | Internet software | $85,624,000 | |||
| C2Net C2Net C2Net was an Internet cryptography company founded by Sameer Parekh, which was sold to Red Hat in 2000. It was best known for its Stronghold secure webserver software.... |
Internet software | $39,983,000 | |||
| Akopia | Ecommerce web sites | — | |||
| Planning Technologies | Consulting | $47,000,000 | |||
| ArsDigita ArsDigita ArsDigita was a web development company cofounded by Philip Greenspun, Tracy Adams, Ben Adida, Eve Andersson, Olin Shivers, Aure Prochazka, and Jin Choi and was started in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the mid-1990s... |
Assets and employees | — | |||
| NOCpulse | Software | — | |||
| Sistina Software Sistina Software Sistina Software was an organization that focused on storage solutions designed around a Linux platform. It was acquired by Red Hat in December, 2003. Their two primary offerings were Global File System and logical volume management .-GFS:... |
Software | $31,000,000 | |||
| Netscape Security-Certain AstsNetscape Security-Certain Asts was acquired from Netscape Security Solutions. | Certain assets | — | |||
| JBoss JBoss (company) JBoss is a division of Red Hat, Inc.. It specializes in open-source middleware software.The company profits from a service-based business model. JBoss employ a Professional Open Source business model where the core developers of projects make a living and offer their services... |
Middleware | $420,000,000 | |||
| MetaMatrix MetaMatrix MetaMatrix is an U.S.-based technology company that created the first true Enterprise Information Integration software product to deliver data services for service-oriented architectures. Founded in 1998 as Quadrian and later renamed, MetaMatrix has development offices in St... |
Information management software | — | |||
| Mobicents Mobicents The is suitable for creating, deploying and managing converged services and applications integrating voice, video and data across a range of IP and legacy communications networks. It includes the following key modules:... |
Telecommunications software | — | |||
| Amentra | Consulting | — | |||
| Identyx | Software | — | |||
| Qumranet Qumranet Qumranet, Inc is an enterprise software company offering a desktop virtualization platform based on hosted desktops in Kernel-based Virtual Machines on servers, linked with their SPICE protocol... |
Enterprise software | $107,000,000 | |||
| Makara | Enterprise software | — | |||
| Gluster Gluster Gluster Inc. is a software company that provides an open source platform for scale-out Public and Private Cloud Storage. The company is privately funded and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California with an engineering center in Bangalore, India. Gluster is funded by Nexus Venture Partners and Index... |
Enterprise software | $136,000,000 |
Divestitures
Competitors
Red Hat's main competitors include the companies Canonical Ltd.Canonical Ltd.
Canonical Ltd. is a private company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu Linux and related projects. Canonical is registered in London and employs staff around the world...
, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, Mandriva
Mandriva
Mandriva S.A. is a publicly traded Linux and open source software company with its headquarters in Paris, France and development center in Curitiba, Brazil. Mandriva, S.A...
, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, Novell
Novell
Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...
, and Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
, along with the communities of Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
and FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
.