American software company. It is best known for its core development, the Red Hat Linux operating system. Now this OS is available in two solutions: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is distributed under an annual subscription and has service support, as well as Fedora (originally Fedora Core), distributed free of charge and supported by enthusiasts. At the same time, Fedora also serves as a kind of "proving ground" on which the company tests all the innovations before equipping Red Hat Enterprise Linux with them. Thus, the development of new versions of the system is, in fact, an open project.
The history of the company began in 1993, a couple of years after Linus Torvalds introduced the Linux kernel. Founded by Bob Yong (Bob Young) and named AC Corporation. She was involved in the distribution of software for Linux and UNIX.
In 1994, someone Marc Ewing introduced his own Linux distribution. According to popular legend, the name red hat ("Red Hat") arose spontaneously after Mark lost his favorite baseball cap, which his grandfather gave him. Moreover, it is alleged that in the first user manual there was a request to help return the lost. Mark did not find a baseball cap, but he came up with a very successful name - unusual and easy to remember, and lovers of souvenirs have a place to turn around. As for Fedora, then everything is simple - this word is translated from English as "fedora".
In 1995, Yong buys out Ewing's development, resulting in the emergence of the company Red Hat Software. In the same year, Red Hat Linux 2.0 saw the light of day. red hat became a public company on August 11, 1999.
In general, the history of Red Hat is replete with a set of technical terms and concepts that say little to the average layman.
For a long time, Red Hat Linux was the only development of the company. The division in 2004 into corporate and freeware solutions caused a backlash among orthodox Linux users. But in general, this action was met favorably and with understanding (and not only by mere mortals, but also by large companies - IBM, HP, ORACLE immediately announced support for the new system). After all, companies want not only to develop free software with open source, but also to earn money.
Headquarters red hat is located in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. Since 2009, the company has been included in the S&P 500 list, where only the most successful companies in the country are allowed. The number of its employees is already estimated at a couple of thousand. Over the years of existence, many valuable acquisitions have been made, in the face of such companies as Jboss, Cygnus Solutions и MetaMatrix.