Red Hat annual revenue crosses $US1 billion

Open source software vendor and enterprise IT services company Red Hat has posted annual revenues of $US1.13 billion, up 25% on a year ago.

According to Business Insider, the news marks the first time a “pure play” Linux open source vendor has earned more than $US1 billion in revenue in a single year.

The company marked the milestone by posting a list of quotes from people who were skeptical about the company’s chances when it was a start-up 17 years ago.

“We think of Linux as a competitor in the student and hobbyist market but I really don’t think in the commercial market we’ll see it in any significant way,” Bill Gates is quoted as saying back in 2001.

Since Gates’ quote, Linux has gone on to form the basis of the Android mobile operating system. Meanwhile, enterprise Linux vendors such as Red Hat have benefited from the strong market position of the LAMP platform (Linux / Apache / MySQL / PHP) in the web server market.