Red Hat, Inc. is the largest distributor of the GNU/Linux operating system, which it distributes under the Red Hat and Fedora brands.
Red Hat was originally founded in 1993 by Bob Young as ACC Corporation, a company that sold Linux and UNIX accessories by catalog. In 1995, ACC Corporation merged with a Linux distribution formed by Marc EWing the previous year, and the company name was changed to Red Hat Software. The company went public in 1999, posted huge profits on opening day, and acquired Cygnus Solutions (another free software provider) later that year.
Red Hat is currently headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices around the world. The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol RHT (previously listed on NASDAQ under the symbol RHAT, but transferred on December 12, 2006), has approximately 2,200 employees (as of April 2007), and achieved revenues of US$278.3 million in 2006.
Red Hat’s core business is Linux distribution and the provision of associated professional services. The company is also involved in the middleware market as a result of the JBoss acquisition in 2006. Other activities in which Red Hat is involved include:
– 108 – Open content portal aimed at developers.
– Dogtail: open source software for testing GUI applications.
– Mugshot: an entertainment-based social networking site.
– The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative: an attempt to create an inexpensive laptop for distribution to children around the world.
– Red Hat Exchange: a FOSS software distribution portal.
– Red Hat Magazine: An online news publication about Red Hat, Fedora, and open source in general.