Enterprise revenues power Red Hat past $2bn barrier

Red Hat is in the enviable position of having become the first open-source firm to break the $2bn revenue barrier. The Linux spinner has reported full-year revenue $2.05bn, an increase of 14 per cent from subscriptions, training and services. Net income was up 10 per cent to $199m. For its fourth quarter Red Hat reported $ …

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for "Linux is free".....

[Alistair]

@ ac

Linux is free. If you want support for your installation from folks that might know a bit more about making it dance and sing, that you have to pay for. And when your business relies on linux to make things happen, you need that.

Now, Jboss, Cloudforms, clustering? That stuff not free.

[bri]

@ac confusion

Linux is free, SLAs aren't. End of story.

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: @ac confusion

Confusion? Or a bit of Tuxbaiting, perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: @ac confusion

"SLAs aren't"

Patches aren't either.

[Anonymous Coward]

If your enterprise depends on it its worth paying for. I've even gone as far as to renegotiate a service deal with a vendor in order to pay them more money. You need the firms you depend on to stay healthy and provide them with a financial incentive to continue support.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: If your enterprise depends on it its worth paying for

Erm, like Google or Facebook ?

[batfastad]

RH

Every time I have had to deal with RH support they have been excellent. So good on 'em I say.

[Anonymous Coward]

RH are rich, they are becoming powerful

and as a public company they must show constant and substantial growth. I'm worried they will soon be looking for some sort of a putsch, a Linux takeover.

[boatsman]

2.5 % profit margin.

is not much, for a software company.

their cost is growing almost as fast as their turnover.

normally in the case of a software business, we would speak of a business in trouble.

In that case, 2 bln only makes it a bigger failure if they ever go tits up.