It’s Red Hat’s 29th birthday!

Red Hat was founded on March 26, 1993—29 years ago this month, and just over a year after Linux was first unleashed upon the world.

So much has changed since then. Open source grew from being a little known and largely misunderstood engineering model to being one of the driving forces in modern software development. Linux evolved from a niche passion project for a handful of developers to being one of the most important technologies enabling the internet, artificial intelligence, space exploration, and more.

But today, we invite you to go back to the beginning and revisit some stories from Red Hat’s early days.

In December 2021, Bob Young—founder and CEO of Lulu.com and co-founder of Red Hat—returned to chat with Chief Architect Adam Clater about the early history of open source software and building what would become the largest open source software company in the world.

We recorded that video conversation, of course, and it’s available for you to watch on demand.

In it you’ll hear about Young’s first job out of school, how he originally heard about Linux (and about his initial skepticism about the whole open source thing), and how he first met and went into business with Red Hat’s other co-founder, Marc Ewing.

The conversation continues on from there, providing a delightful look back at Red Hat’s early history that we hope you’ll enjoy.

Happy birthday, Red Hat, and to Red Hatters new and old around the world.