When you turn 30, you're not a kid anymore. For some of us, 30 is a traumatic birthday. For Red Hat, which turned on March 27, it was a cause for celebration. From a business that got started in one of its co-founder's wife's sewing room, it became the first billion-dollar pure-play open-source company and then the engine driving IBM.
Young teamed up with Linux developer Marc Ewing, and they launched Red Hat Linux from his wife's sewing closet. Initially, Red Hat sold diskettes, servers, services, and CDs, like other early Linux businesses. When I interviewed Red Hat's co-founder in 2014, Young told me,"It took many great contributors from the free software/open-source communities, including Stallman and Torvalds, as well as our teammates, Matthew Szulik, and now Jim and his vast team. None of us could have fundamentally changed the way software is developed and deployed without all the others."
Young added that his son-in-law, an internet software developer, and his colleagues rely heavily on the free and open software that Red Hat contributes to and benefits from. He also expressed gratitude to his family, particularly his wife Nancy, for supporting his endeavors in building a software business on a never-before-seen model.
Even then, however, Young didn't really"get" Linux. It was only after he visited NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and Don Becker invited him to see a neat project he was working on that he got it. Becker's project was, of course,However, Red Hat first needed to find a winning formula, which allowed it to succeed where its now largely forgotten contemporaries such as