One-On-One With Robert Young

Red Hat Software Chief Executive Robert Young recently talked with CRN Seattle Bureau Chief Stuart Glascock about a range of topics from Young's personal background to the founding of Red Hat to the rise of Linux in the enterprise.

CRN: Can you talk about your background and how you came to be involved with Linux?

Robert Young: I was in the computer leasing and rental business when I graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in history. I fell into a job selling computer rentals in the U.K., then ended up in Canada running a computer rental business for a big Canadian public company. I did that for about five years and started my own computer rental company in 1985. I did well but ran into recession in 1990 and sold [it] to a Canadian financial services company and worked for them for a few years. The business was called Vernon Computer Rentals and Leasing and it is still going, based in Toronto, with offices in New York and Atlanta.

CRN: What was the focus at Vernon?

Young: [It] was to get ourselves into the Unix workstation rental and leasing business with Sun Microsystems [Inc.] and [Hewlett-Packard Co.] workstations. We were very small and I was looking for shortcuts into the New York City financial and technical markets and institutions, who were the big users of Unix workstations.

CRN: How did you go about that?

Young: What I did was cozy up to the East Coast Unix user groups in Boston and New York and Washington with the theory that the engineers there would know the needs of their corporations before the corporations themselves. And I liked those guys. I've always had an appreciation for the technical skills [and] making the stuff work. My contribution for the user groups was I published a newsletter for them called New York Unix. The way I ended up in Linux was in the effort to publish this newsletter. I would ask what are the stories that aren't being covered by the national magazines that they would like me write about. The answer was always the free software . . . the C compilers and even then it was the Linux OS.

CRN: When did you take a serious look at Linux?

Young: I first saw Linux in 92. Even then, people were trying to assure me there was no economic model or engine driving it. I was a big Linux skeptic, yet every time I looked at it, the technology kept getting stronger. The number of users kept growing and the technology kept getting more sophisticated. I was focusing on it in this newsletter and realized that most people think software is being written to end up on the shelves of CompUSA. Most of the software on the planet is being written by people for internal applications, more so than for the commercial applications.

CRN: How did you make the transition from publishing to the software business?

Young: With the advent of the Internet, suddenly all these engineers could work together on projects that benefited them internally. It benefited their institutions, and it didn't cost them anything to give it away because they had no commercial interest in this software. That prompted me to get into the software distribution business focused on the free software and Linux technologies. By mid-1994, I switched from publishing a Unix newsletter to publishing a Linux catalog and I was looking for a product that I could brand. I knew Linux would end up on the shelves of CompUSA and I needed products that I could brand. I wanted to turn CompUSA into a customer.

CRN: Is that when you hooked up with Red Hat co-founder Marc Ewing?

Young: A couple of my customers suggested I contact Marc Ewing, and quickly we realized we had a strong fit. He was looking for some finance and marketing help for his small Red Hat Linux project, and I was looking for a product that I could brand and sell to CompUSA among other people. We met at Unix Expo in New York in 1994. We merged operations in January 1995.

CRN: Did you start out knowing exactly what the business model would be for selling what was generally recognized as free software?

Young: In 1995, no one believed that we could make money giving away every line of code that we wrote. The technology vendors [needed to] recognize the benefit of having an operating system that was not owned by anyone and that it was a better OS on top of that. If we could prove that concept, the major technology vendors would fall all over themselves to get their hands on it. The problem is the industry has always complained about Microsoft [Corp.'s] ownership of the infrastructure layer that the rest of the industry is building technology around. Yet the industry has never adopted OS/2 instead of Windows. The reason for it is, why bother? You get OS/2 to replace Windows, all you have done is traded Bill Gates for Lou Gerstner. If you use Java to replace Windows, all you've done is replace Bill Gates with Scott McNealy.

CRN: Was there a breakthrough time for Red Hat when you realized you were on to something big?

Young: In 1996, we won a major industry product of the year award. We tied with Microsoft NT. We were the most surprised at that, all 20 of us including our receptionist. The best Microsoft could do with a mission-critical project, an unlimited budget and a three-year head start was to tie us for the best operating system. That taught us our development team---who are independent professionals and institutional development teams who contributed to our code---was several magnitudes bigger than Microsoft. Then there was the investment last September with Intel [Corp.] and Netscape [Communications Corp.]

CRN: To fast-forward to 1998, how did you guys attract all these great backers?

Young: The idea of bringing in Intel was bringing in the industry's strongest hardware player to endorse the Linux model. It took us eight months to close the deal. With Compaq [Computer Corp.], IBM [Corp.], Oracle [Corp.] and Novell [Inc.], we targeted them. We wanted the [major] technology vendors in each of their market segments involved. Novell is networking tools, including directories and LDAP. IBM is the market leader in a whole range of areas. Compaq is the leader in departmental and Intel-based servers. Oracle leads in databases.

CRN: Again, how did you garner support from all these major companies?

Young: It's because of the momentum we've created. And the momentum that research groups were reporting on Linux growth on the server side of 212 percent. All of these companies were intrigued by Linux. Suddenly the senior management have woke up to the opportunity that Marc Ewing and I spotted in 1995. Why wouldn't the world prefer a better operating system that no one controlled? Now, their customers are saying it's a better OS and studies show it's a better OS than legacy-based [systems]. And if by adopting this I don't create the next big Microsoft, I may be [able to] create some service companies around this platform. What have we got to lose? It took from 1995 to 1998 to prove the concept in the marketplace to take Linux seriously.

CRN: Why will this variant of Unix succeed where others haven't for some 30 years?

Young: Because this is Unix done right. The difference between Linux and Unix isn't the technical tools. Linux in large part is a reimplementation of all the Unix standards. The difference is in licensing. Unix in the end is simply another proprietary operating system, and a dozen different vendors produce their own binary proprietary alternatives of Sun and HP and IBM. Each produced new features in isolation in a proprietary model to beat on each other in the marketplace. The effect of that is the Unixes kept moving apart, so ISVs had trouble running their software on something called Unix because there wasn't a Unix. There was Solaris and HP AIX and [Santa Cruz Operation] Unix, all moving in different directions. A common OS is under the opposite set of pressures than a proprietary model. The proprietary model says build new features to beat on each other in the marketplace.

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