Under the leadership of Matt Hicks, who has been CEO since July 2022, Red Hat is currently thriving in the open source world. However, to make that possible, both popular and controversial decisions must be made. In an interview with Techzine, he looks back on what happened with CentOS, among other things, and also discusses the future.
For Hicks, who has been with Red Hat for 19 years, it is a special time. He sees that we have reached a crucial point for the future of open source — the approach that has been central to his entire career at the company. “I am passionate about open source and believe it is a phenomenal innovation model. I think it’s good for the world. There are things that come up that threaten the sustainability of open source. AI is one of them, to be honest. We need to find that bridge and connectivity to open source.”
His concerns about durability primarily is around AI and the cloning of projects without contributing to them. Engineers are needed who are fully committed to open source to move projects forward at full speed. This involves choices that more or less secure the future of open source — which is largely what the CentOS move is based on.
Technology becomes decisive
Partly due to his many years of experience at Red Hat in various technical roles, Hicks has noticed a shift in what makes companies successful. Years ago, general business skills, financial knowledge, or sales optimizations were often decisive. Now, technological decisions are central. When you look at the future of virtually any company, technology and technological choices are at the core, according to Hicks. Supply chain decisions or financial operations remain important, but seem to have been overtaken by the role of technology.
This focus on technology fits well with Hicks’ background. He describes himself as a techie who loves applying technology, both internally and with customers. “When it comes to technology, I know what we do well. I can authentically guide you to where we are a great partner — and where we are not.”
Difficult decisions as CEO
In his three years as CEO, Hicks has had to make several difficult choices. He cites staff reductions as the hardest decision. “That came fairly early in my tenure,” Hicks says. In 2023, it was decided that 4 percent of the workforce would have to leave in order to remain competitive. “That was difficult because of the cultural change.”
He also decided to focus on fewer products, but to be the best at those. Some projects were transferred to parent company IBM. Sales usually want to have the most options for negotiations. I believe we should minimize the things we talk about and then be the best at those things,” says the CEO. That strategy seems to be working. “Three years later, we are performing excellently with that limited focus. The conversations I have are deep. It has been a great outcome.”
The CentOS issue in perspective
The organizational changes have left their mark on Red Hat. At the same time, during Hicks’ tenure as CEO, controversy also surrounded the CentOS decisions. The company made choices regarding support and source code that sparked discussion in the open-source community. “All we did, really, at the end of the day in our shift was we moved from producing a downstream clone in CentOS to putting our focus on the upstream CentOS stream. And saying: ‘Listen, we’re going to move our community upstream,'” Hicks explains the steps taken regarding the Linux distribution.
The Red Hat CEO points out that options remain. “So if you contribute to it, we get those contributions in RHEL. Anyone else is free to fill the downstream clone bucket, but it won’t be us. We gave away RHEL for developers and individuals 16 copies, including production usage. We never want the Linux community to feel like they can’t use RHEL as an individual because they can’t pay for it. So we took that off the table and said: ‘Listen, if you want to use RHEL, we will make it as accessible as possible for the hobbyist, for DIY, for our core audience. And we’re going to move our community upstream.'”
Hicks acknowledges that the decision was not popular. “I felt like it broke the internet for a bit, but people love free alternatives that I just don’t pay for in the end. But I don’t think a lot of people think through whether that’s a durable thing in open source.”
He uses a striking metaphor to explain Red Hat’s move. “Sometimes with my kids, I still have to make decisions that they may not like, but I feel like they’re the better, durable, long-term decisions.” According to him, Red Hat has made a similar choice as a company. “It was the right decision for open source durability.”
Focus on sustainability
The goal of the CentOS shift was therefore to shift the focus from downstream clones to upstream contributors. “Like Amazon—I usually use that as a good example. They produce Amazon Linux from Fedora. On one side, Amazon is a competitor. They have Amazon Linux. But they make Linux better with that work upstream in Fedora. Our goal in the CentOS shift was just to move the focus from downstream clones to upstream contributors. It was not a popular one, but I think it’s the better one for open source.”
He emphasizes that Red Hat needs to be able to pay engineers who are fully committed to open source. “I feel responsible to make the decisions that make open source as durable as possible.” Hicks hopes that his experience in open source will give him some credit with critics in this regard. But as is often the case with significant changes, the CEO is not counting on everyone’s support. “I’m not looking to get universal agreement on this one, but I have a long tenure in open source too. I hope that some people would say: ‘This guy seems to like it, he’s probably making that from a good basis.'”