Friday Five — February 9, 2018

Twenty years ago, on Feb. 3, 1998, in a conference room in Palo Alto, Calif., the term "open source" was coined. At Red Hat, open source is our way of life. Our mission is to be the catalyst in communities of customers, contributors, and partners creating better technology the open source way. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of open source, we asked some of our longest-standing Red Hatters to share what open source has meant to them throughout the years.

As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the term open source, the underpinnings of open source, from transparency and collaboration to freedom and broad dissemination, have spilled out well beyond the confines of enterprise technology to greatly impact both the world of consumer technology as well as the global business climate at large. Open source has impacted so much that it's hard to pick out a handful of the most critical innovations, but we've tried. Here's 25 things that we think are better thanks to Linux and open source.

Every company in the world now uses open source software. And if you ever searched on Google, bought a book from Amazon, watched a movie on Netflix, or looked at your friend's vacation pictures on Facebook, you're an open source user. Open source has indeed become the model for practical software development. Besides Linux companies such as Canonical, Red Hat and SUSE, technology businesses such as IBM and Oracle also adopted it. This, in turn, led to open source's commercial success. More recently companies you would never think of for a moment as open source businesses like Walmart and Verizon, now rely on open source programs and have their own open source projects.

This year, Red Hat is embarking on a collaborative journey to upgrade and modernize our logo and brand system. The Open Brand Project is a transparent, inclusive and widely collaborative effort, open to everyone with a stake in Red Hat's identity. For us, our logo does more than represent our company; a key part of our corporate identity is our commitment to software freedom. For many, the "secret agent" element of our logo, affectionately known as Shadowman, is an icon of the open source movement, as well as the personification of Red Hat's unique culture. We believe that openness, diversity of thought and wide participation yield the best results, and we are going to apply these same values to the process of updating our logo and brand system.

Damien Wong, VP and General Manager SE Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong at Red Hat discussed why making a move from proprietary to open source technology platforms is such a big decision for companies. He also spoke with Paul Allen and Bryan Curtis on how open source has been driving disruption, can lower costs and is secure. Listen to the podcast.