August 15, 2025 RED HAT JOINS INDUSTRY VENDORS AS A FOUNDING MEMBER OF THE GNOME FOUNDATION Foundation to Reinforce and Advance GNOME as the World's Leading Open-source Desktop Environment Red Hat, the leader in open source Internet infrastructure solutions, today announced it has joined the GNOME project and top industry vendors including Compaq, Eazel, Helix Code, IBM, Sun Microsystems and VA Linux Systems to form the GNOME Foundation, a non-profit, unified group of vendors and individuals dedicated to advancing the use and extending the capabilities of the popular GNOME graphical user environment. The GNOME (GNU Network Object Modelling Environment) project is an open source, GUI-based user interface for Linux designed to run on all modern versions of UNIX-like operating systems. Since its development, GNOME has quickly become one of the world's leading, free and simple desktop environments. Red Hat will assist the GNOME Foundation in leading the technical direction of the continuing GNOME project, offering forums for industry leaders to contribute to GNOME and in promoting the benefits of GNOME. The GNOME Foundation will provide organisational and financial support for GNOME and related open source projects. ``Red Hat has played an integral part in the development of code and support for GNOME,'' said Bob Young, chairman and co-founder of Red Hat. ``As one of the key founders of the GNOME Foundation, Red Hat is dedicated to working with others in advancing this powerful application framework and promoting it as the desktop environment of the future.'' About the GNOME Foundation The GNOME Foundation provides organisational, financial and legal support to the GNOME project. The foundation will help determine the vision and roadmap for GNOME. It will also assist in creating technical standards, co-ordinate GNOME releases, and determine which software projects are parts of GNOME. The foundation will make public statements and administer funds on behalf of the GNOME project. The Foundation will be incorporated as a membership-based, not-for-profit corporation. You are invited to participate in the GNOME Foundation. We welcome contributions in many forms. Our membership consists of those individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to the development of GNOME through participation in the development, documentation and promotion of GNOME. The Advisory Board provides a vehicle for organisations and companies to communicate with the GNOME community and support GNOME. Additional information is available at www.gnome.org Joining Red Hat in the GNOME Foundation is Collab.net, Compaq, Debian, Eazel, Free Software Foundation, Gnumatic, Helix Code, Henzai, Inc., IBM, Sun Microsystems, and VA Linux Systems. Open Source Momentum International Data Corp. (IDC) research states that paid Linux shipments grew faster than any other server operating system over the past two years, and their preliminary figures for 1999 show Linux shipments hold 24.6 percent of the server operating system market, up from 15.8 in 1998. IDC also states that Red Hat Linux is by far the most popular distribution, preferred by 68.7 percent of U.S. Linux users. Research firm Netcraft, Inc. (www.netcraft.com), states that as of May 2000, 36 percent of all public Web sites run on Linux-based operating systems, making Linux the most popular choice for deploying public Web sites. IDC research shows 40 percent of all spending on Linux servers is for Internet related applications, firmly entrenching Linux servers in the Internet infrastructure. Finally, IDC predicts that by 2002, there will be more than 55 million handheld and notebook-style information appliance devices and that by 2005, shipments of these appliances will exceed shipments of PCs. Red Hat's numerous alliances with industry leaders and the demand for Linux-based applications has created open source support from many of the industry's leading software and hardware manufacturers, including Compaq, Computer Associates, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Netscape, Novell, Oracle and SAP. About Red Hat Founded in 1994, Red Hat is a leader in the development of Linux-based operating system software (OS) and services. Based in Durham, N.C., Red Hat builds the most accessible and advanced server OS available anywhere with technical innovations such as RPM and the disk druid installation tool. Red Hat Linux is available for Intel, Compaq Alpha and Sun SPARC platforms. Red Hat Linux available directly from the company and through Red Hat's partner, distributor and reseller programs, which include top PC and server manufacturers like Dell, IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Red Hat Europe was established in July 1999 with its European headquarters based in Surrey, United Kingdom and offices throughout Europe. Red Hat Linux is sold and supported through a number of major distribution and industry partners throughout Europe and from www.europe.redhat.com/shop Red Hat Linux was named InfoWorld's Product of the Year for four years in a row, was given a productivity accolade in Software Development's Jolt Awards, was named an environment/desktop finalist in the Ziff-Davis European Excellence Awards, won the editor's choice awards from the Linux Journal and Australian Personal Computing magazines, and won the `Just Plain Cool' award from Australian Personal Computing magazine. At March's LinuxWorld Expo, more than 8,000 members of the Linux community voted Red Hat a `LinuxWorld Favourite'. Red Hat Linux recently won a Product Excellence award from Software Development Magazine. LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. For further information please contact Fiona Phelps Red Hat phone: +44 (0)1483 300 169 email: fphelps@redhat.com