Red Hat, Other Open Source Companies Taking On Big Developers

Open source software was once the realm of hackers and bedroom developers. That’s certainly no longer the case, as more and more big businesses power their enterprises with the latest open source platforms applications. Instead of charging for licenses, open source developers have built businesses around providing add-on services such as maintenance and security, which inevitably works out much cheaper than going to the mainstream names. With open source companies such as Red Hat now competing with the giants of the corporate software world, the challenge to the likes of International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM), Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) and Microsoft…