Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

In Your Face, Critics! Red Hat Passes $1 Billion In Revenue

Posted by timothy on from the flash-in-the-pan-I-tell-you dept.

head_dunce writes "Now that Red Hat has officially posted more than a billion dollars in revenue, ($1.13 billion to be exact), the company's PR department sent this funny list of quotes predicting doom. For instance, 'We think of Linux as a competitor in the student and hobbyist market but I really don't think in the commercial market we'll see it in any significant way.' Bill Gates, 2001."

4 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. A Billion Thanks to the Open Source Community from by GioMac · · Score: 5, Informative

    Trending: http://www.redhat.com/about/news/archive/2012/3/A-billion-thanks-to-the-open-source-community-from-Red-Hat?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook

    Thanks to both RedHat and OpenSource communities!

    --
    "It feels like I'm at the Zoo when reading this thread - I'm frightened, but it's interesting" (c)
  2. Red Hat also announced some donations by Red+Storm · · Score: 5, Informative

    Red Hat also announced that they will be donating $100,000 to each of the following organizations; Creative Commons, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Software Freedom Law Center and UNICEF Innovation Labs. http://www.redhat.com/about/news/archive/2012/3/A-billion-thanks-to-the-open-source-community-from-Red-Hat

    --
    ---- Fight to protect your right to keep and arm bears! ummmm... ya I think that's right....
  3. Awesome.. but some perspective by rgbrenner · · Score: 4, Informative

    That's great that RH finally passed that mark... that's on top of the good news they've been announcing for the past few years.. from their revenue growth through the recession (thanks to the subscription model), to their entry into the fortune 500.

    But does anyone here think Bill Gates or Microsoft stays awake worried about RH? They pulled in 72x more revenue, 159x more profits, and have 63x more cash on hand (50.69b vs 808m) than Red Hat. Microsoft even has a better profit margin than RH (32.5% vs 13.3%).

    http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=msft
    http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=RHT+Key+Statistics

  4. Re:Let's hear it for the 1%ers! by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Informative

    Red Hat doesn't operate like an "open source" company.
      They're making money precisely because they operate as close to a proprietary company as possible without violating the GPL.

    Um, yes it does.

    The source code for all their stuff is available for free here: http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/6Server/en/os/SRPMS/.

    They don't have to do that. They are only obligated to provide the source on request for a reasonable copying fee to people to whom they distribute binaries to. Instead, they make it freely available to anyone who wants it, without charging a cent for the bandwidth.

    Speaking of cents, you can get CentOS, which is identical to RHEL minus the branding entirely for free because RedHat make the sources available freely. Also, redhat make the sources avaialble for non GPL software which they simply don't have to do.

    So, the claim that they are as proprietary as possible is simply false.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.