Our Development Model
How the best ideas become enterprise-ready
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.
Community To Enterprise
We build open source solutions for the enterprise
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
