Red Hat
Red Hat proved that free software could generate billions in revenue - not by restricting code, but by packaging chaos into certainty.
Red Hat proved that free software could generate billions in revenue - not by restricting code, but by packaging chaos into certainty. The company takes the open-source Linux kernel and transforms it into enterprise-grade infrastructure with support, certification, and SLAs. Think of Red Hat as one of several 'fungal species' in the Linux ecosystem - multiple distributions (Ubuntu, CentOS, SUSE) coexist using the same core infrastructure, each serving different niches like mycorrhizal fungi connecting different plant communities.
IBM's $34 billion acquisition in 2019 wasn't buying a Linux vendor - it was acquiring the bridge to hybrid cloud dominance. Red Hat doesn't own Linux any more than a mycorrhizal network owns the forest floor. But it owns the trust layer that lets risk-averse enterprises adopt what they could never control.
The lesson: in infrastructure businesses, the winner isn't who builds the technology, but who eliminates the friction to adopt it. Red Hat didn't create Linux. They created the reason a Fortune 500 CIO could sleep at night while running it.
Red Hat Appears in 2 Chapters
IBM acquired Red Hat for $34B in 2019 to accelerate hybrid cloud capabilities, repurposing Red Hat's enterprise Linux expertise.
How IBM digested Red Hat's capabilities →Red Hat represents one of multiple Linux distributions serving different enterprise niches using shared open-source infrastructure.
Red Hat as mycorrhizal species in Linux ecosystem →