Wall Street firms increasingly are buying into Linux, but some still need convincing that open source licensing and support models won't make using the technology more trouble than its worth.

Wall Street firms increasingly are buying into Linux, but some still need convincing that open source licensing and support models won't make using the technology more trouble than its worth.

Open source has long flourished on Wall Street. But the more dramatic shift for Wall Street right now is that it is considering open-source alternatives for fundamental, industry-specific applications.

Call it a small but strategic step in the right direction. Following in the footsteps of Red Hat and Novell, the folks at Canonical are positioning Ubuntu for use by Wall Street firms. Some details about the effort could surface on April 19, during the HPC (High Performance Computing) Linux Financial Markets conference in New York. Here are some details.

Call it a small but strategic step in the right direction. Following in the footsteps of Red Hat and Novell, the folks at Canonical are positioning Ubuntu for use by Wall Street firms. Some details about the effort could surface on April 19, during the HPC (High Performance Computing) Linux Financial Markets conference in New York. Here are some details.

Harsh economic conditions tend to accelerate technology shifts, so the top brass at Red Hat were a pretty chipper bunch as they explained to Wall Street how they intend to make money in the coming years.

"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.

Red Hat Inc, the world's largest publicly traded provider of Linux software, reported on Wednesday a quarterly profit that met Wall Street expectations as its revenue grew 32 percent.