Linux Magazine’s Top 20 Companies to Watch in 2008
Who knows what the future will hold? Well, heaven knows we don’t or we’d have already won the lottery a few times and retired to a private island somewhere. However, we can look at the past to make a few reasonable predictions– such as the companies in the free and open source software community that are going to have a major impact on the market in 2008.
Yes, yes, we know– yawn. Red Hat’s going to be important for open source in 2008? Well, of course it’s obvious, but we feel it’s worth mentioning anyway. Why is Red Hat worth mentioning? Because the company still funds a huge amount of innovation in the Linux and FOSS space.
No matter how you slice it, Red Hat carries a lot of weight in the FOSS market. The company’s name is nearly synonymous with” Linux,” and it’s the first company that corporations turn to when they want Linux. Any company that Oracle sets its sights on (via the” Unbreakable Linux” Red Hat clone developed by Oracle) is a sure bet as a company to watch.
And don’t forget to keep an eye on JBoss, which is owned by Red Hat. JBoss, which Red Hat positions as” Enterprise Middleware,” is proving a popular alternative to commercial Java EE application server solutions. (Note to readers, it’s been nearly two years since Red Hat acquired JBoss. Expect to see news of Red Hat acquiring another major player sometime in early to mid-2008.)
We also feel it’s worth noting that Red Hat has made some tremendous strides in its community relations with the Fedora Project. (See our interview with Max Spevack in this issue.) Once solely regarded as a beta for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) we think that Fedora has come into its own as an independent distribution over the last few releases.
(8 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)
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