Bonum Certa Men Certa

Despite US Roots, Red Hat Appears to Have Benefited From NSA Scandals

Who said US businesses are suffering?

Summary: Red Hat's revenues soar after half a year of important revelations about the NSA

A LOT of the corporate press in the US wrongly paints the NSA disclosures as a killer to US technology companies, perhaps conflating "US" with "proprietary". Well, many companies in the US are adhering to Free/Open Source doctrines and they aren't doing too badly, even amid the NSA scandals. Despite them or because of them, those companies are doing well. Those companies hardly seem to have been affected by 'standards' with back doors in them.



Enter Red Hat.

While Red Hat's nation of origin makes it somewhat difficult to trust patches it submits to Linux on behalf of the NSA, south/Latin America sure buys a lot of RHEL. The code is out there for auditing and even compilation by oneself. There is no known back door in RHEL. Some may speculate about hardware-level back doors or even random number generators with too low an entropy, but none of this is confirmed, just hypothesised. The US Department of Defence uses/deploys a lot of Red Hat, so why would the NSA put a back door in 'vanilla' RHEL (China is alleged to have been doing so in derivatives of RHEL).

Putting aside hypotheses, Red Hat is doing well [1] and its profits surge [2], with a 15% increase in revenues [3]. RHEL7 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7) is already looking quite promising [4]. The company, Red Hat, is liaising with OpenStack [5-10] amongst other partners and for those who cannot afford Red Hat there is CentOS 6.5 [11], which has just received a positive review [12].

Techrights has been running on CentOS for quite a few years, enjoying the work of Red Hat and also the low cost (we are hardly funded by anyone, except a few donations that we appreciate a lot). Back doors in proprietary software will hopefully convince more and more nations -- let alone businesses -- to explore GNU/Linux servers, desktops, and more. The price of freedom/autonomy/privacy is misunderstood by too many.

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. State of the Red Hat Union


  2. Red Hat's pockets bulging on strong Linux, JBoss sales
    Enterprise Linux vendor Red Hat posted strong financial results for the third quarter of its fiscal 2014 on Thursday, with earnings that beat both analysts' estimates and the company's own earlier guidance.

    Revenues for the quarter ending on November 30 were $397m, up 15 per cent from the same period a year ago.


  3. Red Hat reports 15% increase in revenues
    Red Hat, an icon of open source business, reported $397 million as total revenue for the quarter. It’s an increase of 15% in U.S. dollars from the year ago quarter.


  4. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta 1 Looks Great, Performance Is Great
    Red Hat this week released the first beta to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. RHEL 7 is based upon improvements and other work that happened over the past few release cycles in Fedora (Red Hat says it's Fedora 19-based but in developer comments it turns out to be a mix of 18/19/20) and is riding on its new enterprise Linux 3.10 kernel. In this article is a first look at RHEL 7 Beta 1 along with our first benchmarks of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 comparing the results to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5.


  5. Dell and Red Hat team to sell enterprise OpenStack


  6. Red Hat OpenStack Platform 4.0 Reaches General Availability


  7. Red Hat launches its own OpenStack product.


  8. Dell and Red Hat's OpenStack Alliance To Open Many Enterprise Doors


  9. Red Hat launches Enterprise Linux OpenStack 4.0 platform


  10. Dell Advances Cloud Efforts and Preps for More Innovation
  11. What’s New In CentOS 6.5?
  12. CentOS 6.5 Review – Red Hat for all
    CentOS firmly sits in the stable category of Linux releases – packages are rarely the the very latest versions, the kernel used is much older and it even still has GNOME 2 as its desktop environment, all in the name of cutting down on bugs. While it is stable and capable of running on older tech, it isn’t as resource friendly as distros specifically geared towards being lightweight. Especially if you pick up the full DVD image of the distro, clocking in at nearly 2 GB, which carries multiple desktop environments and a lot of default apps.


Recent Techrights' Posts

Tesla's Debt More Than Doubled in 2 Years and the Company Will Operate in the Red (at a Loss) Quite Soon
If your first-quarter net income is $409 million and you borrow billions from banks, plus interest to pay on those loans, then you're not far from returning to losses
Microsoft and Windows Have Many Back Doors, But LLM Slop Keep Claiming That Linux Has "Backdoor"
It's another example of LLM slop as FUD amplifier, via slopfarms as well
 
Links 05/08/2025: Hey Hi (AI) Passing Fads and GAFAM "Embracing the Military"
Links for the day
Links 05/08/2025: Samsung and Microsoft Layoffs
Links for the day
Rumours of Mass Layoffs at Red Hat Next Week (August 11th, 2025)
The eleventh means next Monday
IBM is Shutting Down (Piecewise)
IBM is basically being liquidated
The Debian Language Police Department (PD)
"there has never been complaints about anyone that was offended by this -off package"
When The Register MS Says "Linux Backdoor" It Actually Talks About Malware
The leading story in The Register US/MS this morning is Microsoft
Microsoft Windows Fell to 19% "Market Share" in Montenegro
Microsoft must be well aware of this trend
Why We Also Include Gopher Links in Our Gemini (Protocol) Links
There are still many people who use Gopher to relay their messages (like blog posts). They're mostly technical people.
Shouting is an Indication of a Lack of Convincing Argument
Beware what they are attempting to distract from
Mongolia: Microsoft Windows at All-Time Low
in 2009 when Windows was at 99.45% in Mongolia the company was "worth" less than 200 billion dollars
About a Quarter of Today's "linux" News in Google News Came From One Domain and It's a Slopfarm
Not kidding!
Gemini Links 05/08/2025: Zombie Threat and Switching to NixOS
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 04, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 04, 2025
ChatGPT in Trouble
Watch out for the newer buzzwords
The Register MS Links to the Wrong statCounter Page
They link to older data
Dr. Andy Farnell Explains How Google Turned From "Librarian" Into "Oracle", Telling Us What to Think Instead of Where to Look
Google was always a lousy librarian
Microsoft Layoffs Continue in August 2025
If Microsoft is doing so well, how come about 10 rounds of layoffs in about 7 months in 2025?
In Many Countries Vista 11 Adoption Stalled or Became Negative
Not just because people move to GNU/Linux
Microsofters' Lawyers Are Name-calling and Insulting Microsoft Critics, Even Their Spouses
How not to win arguments
Flagging or Tagging Slop That We Find Online
Right now we use ImageMagick
Links 04/08/2025: Very Bad Weather and Travel Restrictions in China
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/08/2025: Misiamisia and Mobile Linux
Links for the day
Microsoft's Stock is Like a Religion, Microsoft Goes Into 'Hiding' (From Shareholders)
like a religious person or devout believer, the media just parrot anything Microsoft says
Links 04/08/2025: 80 Years Since Last Nuclear War, IPv6 in China
Links for the day
Groklaw Static Site Relaunches With New Theme, But Many Pages and All the Comments Are Missing
We suppose that's still a lot better than the site being offline, as it was for several months
"For Five decades; For freedoms; For all users" (Original EMACS Turns 50 Next Year)
Linus Benedict Torvalds was only 6 when EMACS started
In Spain, Microsoft's Search Engine Market Share Fell to 2%
16 years have passed since Bing was introduced
Protecting GNU/Linux-Centric Journalism From Serial Sloppers
Unoriginal slop is taking away traffic from the people who did all the real work
It Looks Like Managers at Oracle Now Use LLM Slop to Write Blog Posts
Did he cheat by prompting LLMs for mindless text "filler"?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 03, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/08/2025: Qubes OS and Curious crypto case of certificates (CCCC)
Links for the day
They Tell Us That "Cloud Storage" is Safe and Robust to Incidents Like Fires
Do you have backups? Where are they and who controls them?
"Allowing SDL to default to Wayland caused a number of customer issues so keep the default at X11 for now"
2025 is another year of Wayland ambitions. It's also a year of self-fulfilling prophecies.
In The United Kingdom (UK), Microsoft Search (Bing) Falls to All-Time Low
Grow? What grow??? It's collapsing.
GNU/Linux Reaches 5% in Oman
Some GNU/Linux distros are made in Oman
Google's "AI Mode" is a Pathetic Joke Prematurely Introduced in the UK (Like "Bard", Which Sank the Company's Shares)
what Google "thinks" about PCLinuxOS
What the Free Software Foundation Started Four Decades Ago is Becoming Mainstream
"Four decades; Four freedoms; For all users"
Doing a Better Job at Labelling Slop Images
we'll label screenshots that contain slop, typically with red-coloured text overlay
Social Control Media is Out of Style
What's your excuse for wasting time on (or in) it?
Maldives: GNU/Linux at All-Time High, Windows at New Lows
data from statCounter shows a reassuring trend
Efficiency is Good, So Why Won't Governments Cull LLM Companies Using Stronger, Stringent Policies?
Like every bubble that ever existed, including some recent ones, an end will come
The Defunct Site LinuxConfig Has Published a Fake Article About Richard Stallman Using LLM Slop, Which Stallman Calls "Bullshit Generator"
Worse yet, it is writing using a "Bullshit Generator" (the term used by Stallman) about Stallman's health
Microsoft Windows Falls to All-Time Lows in Morocco and Algeria
About 70% or even less
StopGenAI in the Cyber Show (C|S)
covering a theme that we too covered a lot lately
Gemini Links 03/08/2025: Once-a-Decade Couch Shopping and Blessings in Disguise
Links for the day
Links 03/08/2025: Political Catch-up, Global Warming, and Hunger
Links for the day
Brittany Day Entered LLM Slop Into LinuxSecurity.com and Something Hilarious Happened: The Site is "Exploited"
The brainless, effortless copypasta of "slop artists" shows its limits
Links 03/08/2025: Microsoft Exchange 0-day Exploited and Avoidable Nuclear Escalation
Links for the day
Next Month 'New Techrights' Turns Two
Next month, on the fourth week, it'll be 2 years since the migration
Definitely Not a Ponzi Scheme
Bitcoin v Microsoft
Online Safety Act Tries to Accomplish the Impossible
All I can say is, "good luck with that!"
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a Billionaires' Lobby
Billionaires that control tech companies
Microsoft Borrows 3 Billion Dollars Per Month, a Company Truly Worth Trillions Would Not Do This
if Windows (and Office) "market share" fell from about 90% to barely 30%, how come Microsoft is now "valued" at 20 times more?
It's Even Worse Than Microsoft Lunduke Puts It; GNOME is SLAPPing Journalists
In our experience, GNOME is so malicious - some elements of it in particular - that it would launch multiple simultaneous SLAPP campaigns not only against journalists but also their spouses
GNU/Linux Adoption Reaches All-Time Highs in Chile, statCounter Indicates
This month marks 4 years since Vista 11 came out (as a fake "leak") and some surveys still measure its adoption at less than 40%
Slop Will Not Change the World
Some of us grow up sooner and leave that nonsense behind (or altogether avoid/skip it)
Gemini Links 03/08/2025: Nostalgia and TOFU
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 02, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 02, 2025