While seemingly a lot, 127 million shares doesn't add up to much in Oracle's world. 127,717,018 shares only account for 3.58% of Oracle's total share count. Last week ~96.5% of Oracle shareholders voted to reject a resolution that would have forced Oracle to consider the social and environmental impact of using open source. No big surprise there.

Asian governments are pivotal to Red Hat's goal of earning 60 percent of its revenue from outside the United States by the end of 2009, said Matthew Szulik, the company's chairman, CEO and president, in a conference call on Thursday.

Red Hat, Inc. (Public, NYSE:RHT) shares just like everything else (including Apple (AAPL)) have been hurt by the recent Bear trends. The problems facing the market are endless and one of my favorite companies and stock has taken a big beating, right down to $1 above their 52-week low. The Company you ask? Linux King, Red Hat Inc.

I wasn't very nice to Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat's new CEO, when I heard the news that he was replacing Matthew Szulik. My reasoning? Matthew Szulik had done so much for Red Hat and besides, what could a Delta Air Lines COO have to teach about open source?

I hear the former CEO of Linspire said it’s going to ruin the company, because the shares will become worthless. While I’m no expert on shares etc. and since I’ve never been a CEO, the guy’s probably right about this. But for us users, what we’re going to see, is a new direction for the not-so-popular Click ‘n’ Run and maybe even a new, merged distribution?

"The open source model, as Red Hat has proven, can be extremely profitable," says Kevin Harvey, a general partner at Benchmark Capital, and MySQL's chairman. "It's not a story of profits at first; it's a story of profits you'll generate as you grow." MySQL would like to see considerably more growth, even before selling stock to the public.

The open source model, as Red Hat has proven, can be extremely profitable," says Kevin Harvey, a general partner at Benchmark Capital, and MySQL's chairman. "It's not a story of profits at first; it's a story of profits you'll generate as you grow." MySQL would like to see considerably more growth, even before selling stock to the public.

Matthew isn't the sort of person to seek the limelight for himself, so it was actually hard to convince him to answer questions. As became evident in his answers, Matthew firmly believes in the open source model and the culture of personal excellence that makes it fruitful.

Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik is not known for avoiding conflicts that threaten his company. So how much longer will it be before he unleashes his legal team to defend against Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s patent accusations in the same way he railed against SCO Group's copyright claims?