Compaq, IBM, Novell and Oracle joined the list of heavy-hitting vendors investing in Linux vendor Red Hat Software, company officials announced today.
Taking minority equity positions in Red Hat Software will enable the four investors to offer an open-source operating system to their users and will help drive the adoption and success of Linux, Red Hat said in a statement.
Financial details of the investments were not disclosed.
Red Hat selected Compaq, IBM, Novell and Oracle for their leading positions within the computing industry, company co-founder and CEO Robert F. Young said in a statement.
Intel, Netscape, and venture capital firms Greylock and Benchmark Partners made equity investments Red Hat in September 1998.
Red Hat builds, maintains and provides technical support for the Red Hat Linux operating system, which currently runs on Intel, Alpha and Sun SPARC platforms.
There are more than 10 million users running the Linux operating system today, according to the company. Linux was the fastest growing server operating environment in 1998, totaling more than 17% of all server operating system shipments, according to International Data Corp.
RELATED LINKS
Network World, 02/19/99
Linux to get boost from Intel, Netscape investment
Network World, 9/24/98
Linux gathers critical mass needed to compete with NT
Network World, 02/08/99
Why Linux is better for the enterprise
Network World, 11/16/98
