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Red Hat 'pleased' to be top Linux contributor

By Sean Michael Kerner on August 19, 2009 4:51 PM

From the 'Modest Market Leader' files:

Linux vendor Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) was named in a study today by the Linux Foundation as being the top Linux kernel contribution company.

Red Hat had 12 percent of all change contributions, led by their key kernel contributors Ingo Molnar and David S. Miller. I reached out to Red Hat to get their take on their status, and they were somewhat humble in their position as the leaders in Linux.

"We are always pleased with these numbers, and given the large scale of resources we put into making Linux enterprise-ready, the numbers are not too surprising," Nick Carr, Red Hat marketing director wrote in an email to me. "We track activity numbers internally on an occasional basis, and know that Red Hat has been the leading contributor to the Linux kernel for many years."

Though Red Hat has been the leading contributor for years, as it turns out, being the leader is not a conscious status that Red Hat is chasing.

"The numbers are nice, but customers do not choose Red Hat because its engineers are big kernel contributors," Carr said. "Our focus is to provide a commercial-strength environment for our customers that includes the features they need (security, performance, scalability, stable APIs, etc.). It involves a lot of core development. The most valuable aspect of the numbers is that they illustrate exactly how much work goes into the Linux kernel, and how dedicated Red Hat is to the open source development model."

Well in any case, congrats to Red Hat. I personally do think, the fact that Red Hat is the leading Linux vendor by revenue, as well as Linux kernel contributions is a key calling card for both the business and the development community.

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