Enterprise open source Toolkit

Red Hat finds home in heart of capitalism

Andrew Donoghue ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 12 Dec 2006 17:31 GMT

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates once likened the open-source movement to communism, but there was little evidence of that on Tuesday when Linux specialist Red Hat took over the New York Stock Exchange.

Red Hat's chief executive Matthew Szulik was on hand to ring the Exchange bell to announce the beginning of the day's trading at the $23 trillion (£11.7tn) exchange and announce that his company was now listed on the NYSE, rather than its previous home on the Nasdaq.

"It's been a long time coming and great honour for our shareholders. The global recognition of the NYSE and Red Hat make a great combination," said Szulik.

He added that large companies, whether they are a stock exchange, a pharmaceutical company or a government agency, are all looking to drive down the costs of computing and increase the security and reliability of their offerings. "Open source is proving to be a better-quality product at the lowest possible price for the consumer," he added.

Red Hat has had to contend with some aggressive moves by its competitors of late, including an announcement by Oracle that it would effectively be releasing its own version of Red Hat's Linux server operating system, and Linux distributor Novell's recent controversial tie-up with Microsoft.

Did you find this article useful?
299 out of 353 people found this useful

More In Enterprise open source

Company/Topic Alerts

Create a new alert from the list below:

Featured Talkback

Its the applications and device drivers that run on windows that cement its dominance. How many people would fork out hundreds of pounds for Vista if Linux ran all the software and kit they wanted to use.