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Whitehurst: A billion thanks to the open source community from Red Hat
Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst celebrates
the company's billion dollar milestone with a donation. "Last
December, Red Hat decided that no billion dollar milestone would be
complete without honoring the open source community. To that end, we are
making a $100,000 donation to the future of open source. Red Hat associates
nominated and voted for the following organizations to benefit:"
Creative Commons, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Software Freedom Law Center, and UNICEF Innovation Labs.
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A hundred thousand thanks for a billion, anyway Posted Apr 3, 2012 7:10 UTC (Tue) by ringerc (subscriber, #3071) [Link] ... which is still not bad at all, thanks RH. $100,000 (0.1%) may not seem like much, but that's revenue not profit; it's before costs. 0.1% of revenue can be a huge chunk out of operating profits. Not only that, but Red Hat also employs a lot of important devs across the whole stack from kernel & drivers right through to middleware platforms and high level integration tools. That's a huge and ongoing contribution. Sure, it's commercially motivated, but that makes it no less awesome.
A hundred thousand thanks for a billion, anyway Posted Apr 3, 2012 7:51 UTC (Tue) by tpo (subscriber, #25713) [Link]
> ... which is still not bad at all, thanks RH. $100,000 (0.1%) may not
> seem like much, but that's revenue not profit; it's before costs. > 0.1% of revenue can be a huge chunk out of operating profits.
To put that into some - maybe irrelevant - perspective [1]:
"Migros is one of Switzerland's largest enterprises, its largest supermarket chain and largest employer"
A hundred thousand thanks for a billion, anyway Posted Apr 3, 2012 8:20 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
Migros is a co-operative, so its only way of spending profits are to increase remuneration to employees, return the money to the community (a large proportion of Swiss are "members") or re-invest into the business. It does not have shareholders like for-profit Red Hat, so paying a dividend is not an option for example.
If anybody has a pile of cash and has a busines plan for a co-operative Free Software company I'd certainly encourage it. But traditionally supermarkets were a good choice because they have so many tendrils connecting them with the community it's easy for their community to feel invested in the co-operative. Every company supplying the supermarket, and every consumer buying from it, can see the benefit of working together.
A hundred thousand thanks for a billion, anyway Posted Apr 3, 2012 8:48 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] … because they have so many tendrils connecting them with the community it's easy for their community to feel invested in the co-operative. In point of fact, Migros is running what amounts to community colleges all over Switzerland (part of the one percent money goes into funding these). It's a completely different setup.
Has someone confused revenue with profit? Posted Apr 3, 2012 17:59 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Migro isn't giving 1% of revenue away; they would go bankrupt if they did.Red Hat has not made a billion dollars in profit; that is the revenue number, most of which was used to pay expenses (employee salaries and benefits, equipment costs, and other expenses). Their gifts to the free software community have been far larger, for example, all the work on glibc, GCC, and the rest of the GNU toolchain that has been assigned to the FSF has cost Red Hat far more than $100K.
No, they haven't Posted Apr 3, 2012 23:55 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
You can't even spell their name, but you want us to believe that unlike the authorities in the country where they operate, who have access to all their financial records, you're an authority on the solvency of co-operatives running Swiss supermarkets ?
Migros isn't going to go bankrupt. If for some reason the conditions in their marketplace made it tough to continue to spend 1% of revenue on community projects they could go to their (millions of) members and seek authority to discontinue this practice or put it on hold for a period. But in reality even with foreign for-profit discount supermarkets entering the Swiss market there seems no likelihood of a serious threat to Migros. It is well-loved by locals.
Your estimation would be wrong even for a for-profit corporation running supermarkets. A well run supermarket can easily clear 1% profit, which means if they gave 1% of revenue away they'd be close to break even. But supermarket chains have routinely operated with as much as 1-2% losses without being in danger of creditors seeking administration, let alone bankruptcy. IIRC Aldi, in my country, went from -1% to +1.5% in twelve months under new management and even in financial papers it was never front page news.
Has someone confused revenue with profit? Posted Apr 4, 2012 14:59 UTC (Wed) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
You are right
2011 turnover: CHF21045m Culture percent: CHF117.6m
so it seems to be more like 0.5% of their turnover ;). Still, beats any other org.
A hundred thousand thanks for a billion, anyway Posted Apr 3, 2012 10:08 UTC (Tue) by rengolin (subscriber, #48414) [Link]
Exactly! RH spent much more than 100k on open source over the past decades.
This donation is a thank-you gift, and as such, much more symbolic than substantial.
A hundred thousand thanks for a billion, anyway Posted Apr 3, 2012 16:04 UTC (Tue) by jimparis (subscriber, #38647) [Link]
Just to nitpick: it's 0.01% of revenue, not 0.1%
A hundred thousand thanks for a billion, anyway Posted Apr 4, 2012 1:51 UTC (Wed) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link] $100,000 (0.1%) may not seem like muchIt seems like a lot to me.
Whitehurst: A billion thanks to the open source community from Red Hat Posted Apr 5, 2012 14:55 UTC (Thu) by dashesy (subscriber, #74652) [Link] Thanks to RH success, I am sure many CEOs are now talking about open source and its values The Red Hat way.
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