Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Red Hat In The Black for Q3

Posted by timothy on from the green-is-a-nice-color-too dept.

wheeeee! writes "Red Hat has posted a profit for the third quarter. Well, a meager $300 grand of actual net, but still a profit nonetheless. Their total revenue of $24.3 million was higher than expected. The cash flow appears to have been spurred by an increase in sales of RH's Advanced Server, of which 12000 were sold, compared to 8000 the previous quarter. RH says they're now following the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, developed in the wake of recent accounting troubles at some companies."

11 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. This is great-or is it? by Martigan80 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well it is great news that a company how's business is solely about linux_is_turning a profit, and especially since they have been not struggling, but watching what they do. It is also good to see that they are doing this with out memberships or asking for more donations. What also helps is that their Distro is what many American business use, and what certification are measured against (some not all). Now is this good? After the 8.0 release I didn't see so many people praising Red Hat as with the 7.3 release. I see Red Hat push for a standardization in the Linux community, but it is more of "their" standards, not what the community wants. This is a double edged sword, good for them and getting Linux more coverage, but possibly bad for the community with a muscle like Red Hat who as we can tell is starting to flex a bit. Please tell me what you think on this.

    --
    This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
    1. Re:This is great-or is it? by nagora · · Score: 3, Interesting
      After the 8.0 release I didn't see so many people praising Red Hat as with the 7.3 release.

      I've been on RH since 5.0 and I don't expect to ever "upgrade" to 8+. The push for a one-size-fits-all desktop based on KDE/GNOME means that it is getting incresingly hard to administer a system that does not use either of those. It is not helped that so many KDE and GNOME programs do not even bother including a man page.

      So, I think all the systems I have RH on will in future be upgraded a package at a time; I currently compile the kernel from source anyway.

      New systems will probably either be Gentoo or I might try SuSe; Debian is now so far behind that I wouldn't feel confident trying it on new hardware.

      TWW

      --
      "Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
    2. Re:This is great-or is it? by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Interesting
      After the 8.0 release I didn't see so many people praising Red Hat as with the 7.3 release. I see Red Hat push for a standardization in the Linux community, but it is more of "their" standards, not what the community wants. This is a double edged sword, good for them and getting Linux more coverage, but possibly bad for the community with a muscle like Red Hat who as we can tell is starting to flex a bit. Please tell me what you think on this.

      I think you're exaggurating :)

      Actually I think RedHat got lots of praise for 8.0, especially considering it was such a big leap. Desktop unification was a brilliant move, and for distros that ship both desktops you can expect to see more of this in future I am thinking.

      Redhat have been sponsoring (through Havoc) the desktop standards effort for some time now. The standards are hardly "theirs", they are developed in conjunction with the community and the only ties to Redhat are the fact that Havoc is the organiser and the mailing lists are hosted on a Redhat box. Redhat have never been about forcing control on people, far from it.

      I personally think 8 is great, it looks extremely slick and professional and the admin tools are nicely integrated into gnome2. The fact that they're now in the black tells me it's going to be alright - the hype has passed, but Linux is still here and going strong.

    3. Re:This is great-or is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I've actually been a RedHat user since 5.2 and I've tried a few other distro's along the way, specifically Mandrake, Debian, and SuSe.

      RedHat 8.0 is without question the best Linux distro I've used and has had less "minor issues" than any other distro. I like the Bluecurve look and even if I didn't I would shut it off and not use it, like any sane person would.

      I think it's the loud minority who have been bashing 8.0 and I really don't pay much attention to the zealots. For real world usage RH 8.0 works better than anything I've used previously and that's all that matters to me.

      Warmest regads.

    4. Re:This is great-or is it? by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      The push for a one-size-fits-all desktop based on KDE/GNOME means that it is getting incresingly hard to administer a system that does not use either of those.

      Real users use xterm for eveything :-).

      I don't know about doing admin for desktop systems, but using the system as a server hsn't changed much. As far as systems go, I use a mix of RH 7.2, 7.3, and 8.0 and I have a couple of Debian unstable distros for fun. I have KDE on some of them, Gnome on others and to be honest, I don't usually notice much difference. My main issue with RH is the odd placement of some config files. So it goes... Life's too short to bitch about desktops.

      --
      That is all.
  2. Quite impressive by Lebannen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm always impressed when relatively 'public' offerings such as Red Hat can turn a profit, really showing how important the business sector is. They may want free software, but they're more interested in low-cost software with some guarantee of support and an upgrade path. What I also found interesting was that those sale on advanced Server aren't actually sales - they're actually a subscription charge. 800-900 dollars for a year, product launched in May, and 1200 buyers (subscriptors?) by the third quarter - so that comes to just over $10,000,000 *if* they all pay a year's charges in advance. Not bad, and a revenue stream which will keep going year-over-year. Not bad at all. And I thought it was mainly online games charging subscriptions...

    --
    Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" whilst looking for a rock
  3. Missing zeroes by KecCu · · Score: 4, Interesting
    According to the article, that should be $305,000 profit.

    More important though, they will lower they prices:
    "The average selling price of an Advanced Server subscription in the second and third quarters was $800 to $900 over a year, but it will decrease to $600 to $800 in the future, Red Hat said"

    What I particularly like:
    "overall gross margins were 66 percent"

    Now there's a healthy company!

  4. Overvalued by nuggz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Redhat has 170 million shares outstanding.
    A Market capitalization of 1 billion dollars.
    $300k isn't going to cut it. (annually, quarterly, monthly or even weekly.)

    Daily earnings of $300k would be decent.

    1% profit on their sales is a little slim.

    They've still got a way to go to justify their price

  5. Red Hat Linux pricing: 7.3 vs. 8.0 by johnraphone · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Anyone notice the Redhat 7.3 prices vs 8.0 pricing?

    Red Hat Linux 7.3 Personal - $59.95
    Red Hat Linux 8.0 Personal - $39.95 ($20 cheaper)

    Red Hat Linux 7.3 Professional - $199.95
    Red Hat Linux 8.0 Professional - $149.95 ($50 cheaper)

    Redhat 8.0 is actually cheaper than 7.3. Its pretty interesting if they will end up making more money doing this.

    --
    Free Instant Site Inclusion
    1. Re:Red Hat Linux pricing: 7.3 vs. 8.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      If you look at the financials, neither Personal
      nor Pro make up significant portions of RedHat's
      revenue: the bulk of it comes from corporate
      sales of Advanced Server.

      Bill

  6. Re:so what about unitedlinux by Erik_ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And they are slowly succeeding. Red on Blue with IBM supporting the OS, Oracle databases on Red Hat. VMware's use of Red Hat as the Console OS for the VMware ESX Product. and ISS RealSecure network/server sensors on Red Hat.
    If you are a great fan of Linux and want to applicate it to a business environment, Red Hat is the most 'corporate' oriented choise you can make.