August 13, 2008 6:37 AM PDT
The lurid, untold history of Red Hat
This morning I was talking with my sweet, missionary mother, and she asked me about my meetings yesterday with Red Hat.
Mom: Where did they get the name "Red Hat", anyway?
Me, not quite sure of the right answer: Well, I think one of the early founders, Bob Young, had a red fedora or something.
Mom: Was he a pimp?
I guess she wouldn't have found the answer on Red Hat's official history, nor would the Wikipedia entry for Red Hat help her. This list of the etymologies of corporate names, however, would have helped her.
Unfortunately, the name comes from company founder Marc Ewing's red hat worn during lacrosse games, and not a side business of pimping. Now she'll never pay for RHEL.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
"How Red Hat got its name" on the bottom right :)