25 things you should know about Red Hat

Twenty-five years ago the world looked very different; a gallon of gas averaged $1.16 in the U.S.; the first Beanie Babies were introduced; Jurassic Park was the top-grossing movie in the world; Nelson Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; Buckingham Palace opened its doors to the public for the first time; and CERN released the source code for the world wide web. And a small businessman met a geek at a tech conference and Red Hat, Inc. was born.

We’ve come a long way and as we celebrate our 25th anniversary, we’re taking a look back at some of the defining moments you know and some of the fun facts you might not know about Red Hat.

1. Red Hat was founded on March 26, 1993.

2. Red Hat got its name from founder Marc Ewing who wore a red Cornell University lacrosse hat, given to him by his grandfather, while attending Carnegie Mellon University.

3. Red Hat contributes to more than 450 open source projects from all aspects of the software stack, from the operating system and developer toolchain to middleware, the desktop, and the cloud.

4. Red Hat Linux first appeared in 1994, with an October release called appropriately: Halloween.

5. Red Hat’s initial public offering took place on August 11, 1999.

6. Red Hat has made more than 25 acquisitions since becoming public. Our first acquisition took place in 1999 when we acquired certain assets of Atomic Vision, a San Francisco design studio, to make improvements to the redhat.com website.

7. Red Hat’s current logo was developed in 2000 and features the Shadowman icon, which we believe has become a beacon for the open source software movement. In 2018, we began an open initiative to update and simplify our corporate logo and brand system.

8. In 2002 DreamWorks released, Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron, which was produced using Linux.

9. Red Hat unveiled Red Hat Enterprise Linux (originally called Red Hat Linux Advanced Server) in 2002 and become a pioneer of the open source subscription model.

10. Red Hat hosted its first Summit in 2005 in New Orleans.

11. Red Hat acquired open-source middleware provider JBoss on June 5, 2006.

12. Red Hat's first partner conference was held in 2007, with seven partners represented. Today hundreds of partners attend partner conferences around the globe.

13. Red Hat created its current mission statement collaboratively - through two rounds of input and lots of open debate from 400+ Red Hatters, in 2009.

14. Red Hat moved its headquarters to downtown Raleigh in 2012.

15. Red Hat became the first pure-play, one-billion dollar open source company in 2012, reaching $1.13 billion in annual revenue during its fiscal year.

16. The first Women in Open Source Awards were announced at Red Hat Summit 2015, the awards recognize women who make important contributions to open source projects and communities or who promote open source methodologies.

17. Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst released his book, The Open Organization, Igniting Passion and Performance, on June 2, 2015 through Harvard Business Review Press.

18. Red Hat achieved $2 billion in total revenue in fiscal 2016.

19. Red Hat acquired IT automation startup Ansible on October 16, 2015.

20. In 2016, a wedding took place on the main stage of Red Hat Summit, officiated by president of products and technologies, Paul Cormier.

21. The 100 millionth pull request from GitHub took place on May 31, 2017 and it was an update to OpenShift.

22. When Red Hat opened its Open Innovation Labs in Singapore in 2017, the celebration included a traditional Chinese lion dance for good luck.

23. Red Hat has more than 2,000 patents, and in 2017 expanded and extended its 2002 Patent Promise to provide a zone of non-enforcement for over 99% of free and open source software.

24. A route-to-market mix of 71% from the channel in Q4 FY2018 highlights the importance of our Red Hat Partners.

25. To mark our 25th anniversary, State of North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and City of Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane declared March 26, 2018, as Red Hat Day across North Carolina and in Raleigh, respectively.