Red Hat thinks things are great in open source land

THE PRESIDENT AND CEO of Red Hat, Jim Whitehurst used the occasion of the US President's State of the Union address to tell Red Hat's customers and partners how well everything is going for the company.

Whitehurst said, "Looking at Red Hat's growth over the past several quarters, many have wondered if we were even aware that the world was in the midst of the worst recession in modern history." He said that Red Hat has grown at double-digit rates in both revenue and headcount throughout the recent recession.

It seems that open source thrived during the downbeat economy as reduced IT budgets drew many CIOs to take a closer look at open source as a cost-effective solution.

It was also good that President Obama made moves to open up Washington to the software produced by the open source movement. In October, Whitehouse.gov announced its move to Drupal for content management and a few days later the deputy CIO for the US Department of Defense issued a memo clarifying guidance on the use of open source software and its advantages.

Other than that Red Hat's state of the open sauce union message was basically a rehashing of old press releases. Whitehurst said that he hasn't got much of a clue about what will happen in 2010 as he doesn't have a crystal ball. We wonder what is wrong with his Tarot cards. µ