The highly successful initial public offering of VA Linux Systems, Inc. caused a buzz across the industry this week. The company's focus on turnkey Linux-based systems may help increase confidence in open source in the corporate market. Network World spoke with Red Hat President and CEO Matthew Szulik to get his perspective on the VA Linux IPO - and what's ahead for Linux.
What does the VA Linux IPO mean for Red Hat's future in the market?
This is further good news for the open source and Linux marketplace at large. It has created an opportunity for customers looking to buy turnkey Linux hardware and software as an alternative to Unix.
How does it specifically fit into the Red Hat scheme?
With VA Linux shipping systems with Red Hat Linux, it has expanded our channels of distribution and provides an avenue to turnkey solutions for customers.
Do you think Linux can sustain the momentum it has right now?
Of course there is the momentum on behalf of the technical buyer, and with that, we are at the beginning stages. I can't speculate on what's happening on Wall Street, but it's wonderful for people to have choice - purchasing more cost-effective solutions where historically they have been dependent on a singular source of support for technology and services.
Given its open source roots and the nature of development in that arena, how will Red Hat maintain that spirit despite the increasing commercialization of Linux?
We have always been committed to that. When you look at the major vendors out there, we are the only one shipping all the source code we develop and we are definitely committed to maintaining that. It is the defining tenet to our business.
Can you say what Red Hat's most important goal for the upcoming year will be?
We believe that open source can be more beneficial to the consumer and the marketplace, and we want to have more applications to port on to the Linux platform. We want to expand support on a worldwide basis from proprietary systems to Red Hat linux. What we are hearing from developers is that they would like to have a reference platform and consistently they are selecting Red Hat Linux. When you look at the acquisition of Cygnus, they bring an excellent set of development tools, and our strategy is to establish a Red Hat developer's network online so we can provide two levels of content that will accelerate their movement to Linux.
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