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Our Development Model

How the best ideas become enterprise-ready

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Open Innovation

Creating better technology using open source

Innovation doesn’t happen by chance. It’s the outcome of a proven process. The Red Hat® development model begins in the open source community with thousands of contributors—and results in finished products that are tried, tested, and trusted.

See where we contribute

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Community To Enterprise

We build open source solutions for the enterprise

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An open development model connects Red Hat engineers to open source communities. As members work together to identify and elevate the best ideas, we support them by contributing to the code and creating products from upstream projects.

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We’re involved in many open source communities, building and refining the technologies that make up today’s IT environments. From the operating system to automation, middleware, and containers, we continuously create open solutions for the enterprise.

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Cracking the Textbook

Meet Dr. Richard Baraniuk from Rice University, where his open source project OpenStax has grown into one of the world’s largest nonprofit digital learning platforms. See how OpenStax is transforming education for the better, one interactive textbook at a time.

Watch the full film

Security

More eyes, more security

The open community-to-enterprise development model often results in more secure software. Why? Because when everyone can access the code, threats can be discovered and patched more quickly. As an added level of security, Red Hat tests, hardens, and supports open source software so each customer has the same level of assurance.

Learn why IT security is important

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Cost

Obvious—and less obvious—savings

Open source software revolves around community-based distribution and doesn’t require licensing fees, which can result in significant cost savings when deploying solutions. Plus, the scalability and technical support that come with open projects—including those available with our subscription model—help save customers precious time.

Explore how subscriptions work

Innovation

Protecting open source projects

Because we believe software patents can discourage innovation—and because at their core, open source communities should be free to innovate without patent barriers—we have a patent policy in place to protect these projects. We believe this defensive approach benefits the entire open source community.

Discover how we protect open projects

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Longevity

Code that lasts forever

Unlike with proprietary solutions, there’s no risk of discontinuing open source software code. Even if a vendor stops distributing a certain product, the code will remain available indefinitely for use and improvement.

See our commitment to code

IT leaders trust enterprise open source’s security

89% believe enterprise open source is as secure or more secure than proprietary software

Find out why

Development is just the beginning

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