Red Hat has announced the formation of a new non-profit organisation, the Red Hat Centre for Open Source (RHCOS), that will sponsor, support, promote and engage in a wide range of scientific and educational projects intended to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good of the general public.
Led by an impressive group of influential leaders with backgrounds in technology, law, business and research, RHCOS will foster projects that advance the philosophy of open source, through which collaborative intellectual pursuits produce results to be freely shared and enhanced throughout society. Red Hat, Inc. co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Marc Ewing will devote considerable time and effort to the new organisation as a Founding Director.
"The open source software movement has been successful because it provides unprecedented control and quality to users, and at the same time enables a model for cooperative development of technology that leverages the expertise of the global community," said Colin Tenwick, Vice President and General Manager, Red Hat Europe. "The implications of this model when applied outside software development are enormous, and the benefits to society will be huge. Advancing this global cooperative model for the development of technologies and ideas is what RHCOS is all about."
"We have formed RHCOS because we believe that the philosophy and practice of open development can benefit many other parts of society,'' said Bob Young, co-founder, CEO and Chairman of Red Hat, Inc. and also a Founding Director of the RHCOS. "Today, much advanced research and intellectual pursuit is funded by private industry for proprietary purposes. The time is right to introduce an approach that will encourage new advances and foster innovation for everyone's benefit.''
In addition to Ewing and Young, the Board of Directors for RHCOS includes well-known innovators and thought leaders. Board members include:
· John Seely Brown, Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and Director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). His personal research interests include digital culture, ubiquitous computing, user-centering design and organisational and individual learning. A major focus of Brown's research over the years has been in human learning and the management of radical innovation.
· John Gilmore, entrepreneur and free software pioneer. The architect of the first Sun workstations, Gilmore is the founder of Cygnus Solutions, a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a leading advocate for intellectual freedom.
· Lawrence Lessig, Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Lessig teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, contracts, comparative constitutional law and the law of cyberspace.
· Sim B. Sitkin, PhD, Associate Professor at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. Professor Sitkin's teaching interests include managerial effectiveness, organisational behaviour, organisation design, organisational control and the management of organisational change.
RHCOS will initially be funded with $8 million in a combination of cash and Red Hat common stock donated by Red Hat, Inc. and three founding investors of Red Hat: Young; Ewing; and Frank Batten, Chief Executive Officer of Landmark Communications. Details regarding grant criteria and the application process are currently being determined by the Board of Directors and will be released at a later date.
About the Red Hat Center for Open Source The Red Hat Center for Open Source is an independent, non-profit organisation that works to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good. RHCOS serves as a funding source and incubator for projects developed under the open source philosophy - freely sharing intellectual value for the good of society. Headquartered in Durham, N.C. , RHCOS provides society with a counterbalance to restricted, proprietary practices in technology, research, law, health and sciences. For more information, see http://www.redhat.com/community/rh_center.html.
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