Red Hat first billion dollar Linux company.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-sour...illion-dollar-linux-company-has-arrived/10692

Not bad for a 1% share eh!

Red Hat didn’t just break a billion dollars in annual earnings, it smashed its way pass a billion bucks with a fiscal year revenue of $1.13 billion, up 25% year-over-year.

 

It is very encouraging to know that open source is a legitimate business model. I think I personally would be very worried about jumping into a market with my software open source and trying to sell it purely on support.

I'd like to say that I'd always open source my software but I don't know if I really would.

 

All the world's critical apps run on open source including 70% of the net or more. Guess the military, banking, stock exchanges are not worried.

www.redhat.com/resourcelibrary/case-studies/?intcmp=70160000000TB8xAAG&

From NYSE to TNT to Qualcomm and more, list goes ON.

 

Didn't you say something 99% the same over here

 

Also not bad in the current economic climate

 

Hello Iceland ...??
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/busines...ndows-for-linux-in-open-source-push-40154870/
Is it Cheaper to wear the redhat ?
..and Ireland?
... Spain?
... Portugal?

 

Unsurprisingly the idea of selling software is something I think about a lot lol Redhat reminds me of it every time.

 

Indeed not bad at all, also shows the increasing trend of big companies now seriously moving to open source even if its paid.

 

IT's not much of a trend. It's been this way for ages. Servers just about only run nix.

 

Big companies are using Linux for development, just not for servers.

 

but for whatever reason, it's repeated often.

^^^ formatting is mine

The para previous to the quoted one is also worth noting.
From: https://www.linux.com/news/featured...has-done-is-worth-so-much-more-than-a-billion

 

glad to see people are making money at this.

you got to wonder about the stability of some Linux projects/distros when you visit their website and it says "Made possible by your donations and advertisements".

i wonder if that is a viable business plan.

 

For my "money", I'd stay with something a little more solid.

 

that was from the Linux Mint website.
ain't too many options left after that.lol

 

Stability doesn't come from money, in that case, we shouldn't see any BSOD

 

i really meant viability when i said stability.

 

ot posts removed

 

In case of viability, RH's success in this economic climate speaks for itself.

 

The open source/ free product + paying for support is viable but it really relies on your product being worthwhile. Instead of getting people to pay for it before they use it you instead get your product out there for anyone who wants it and then if they're a business or need professional level support they can pay for that package.

We see this with a lot of security software, such as Comodo. The product is free, the support costs money. RedHat does the same thing.

It's a good business model but in terms of how viable it is I think it can make things a bit more difficult. Instead of making money every time someone uses your product you really only make money when you land larger clients. If there are better alternatives and your product is niche/ only being used by regular users you won't make money.

 

Do remember piracy is rampant among so called end users so in true terms, its more realistic to expect pay from a corporation than to track down every pirate end user one by one.

 

anyway,

here's an article about ideas to make Linux profitable:
---http://www.trendcaller.com/2009/01/linux-desktop-could-be-profitable-soon.html

the article is 3 years old but i think there are some good ideas in there.

 

i think most big open source projects i.e. government projects aren't paying just for support, all the software is custom built and comes with support. OSS makes more sense the bigger the project, no? and that's where the money is. these are prefect times for FOSS to gain market share and that's why more governments are moving to it and probably why red hat is doing well.

 

Anyone knows if they report country-wide or region-wide revenue figures?

 

Nice read on Red Hat and Fedora: http://www.h-online.com/open/features/HealthCheck-Fedora-Where-s-the-beef-1520194.html