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Red Hat takes on the recession

By
Michael V. Copeland
Michael V. Copeland
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By
Michael V. Copeland
Michael V. Copeland
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August 21, 2009, 10:57 AM ET

The open source revolution may have yet to happen, but with company budgets on the line, change is in the air.

Remember about five or six years ago when the open source software movement was going to beat the stuffing out of software giants like Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL) and Sun (JAVA)? That hasn’t exactly happened.

Only one company, Red Hat (RHT) took the open source approach: Hundreds (if not thousands) of volunteers work on a piece of software — in this case the Linux operating system for the corporate world — develop it in a money-generating subscription package, and turn it into a large enough business to go public.  Read more about Red Hat here.

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By Michael V. Copeland
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