Today's announcement of the merger of Red Hat Inc. and Cygnus Solutions sent shock waves throughtout the Linux world, by demonstrating the growing influence of commercial ventures in the open source Linux movement. It also shows Red Hat's intentions to become a major player in the embedded Linux market.

According to David Penn of Linux Journal, “Red Hat's acquisition of Cygnus Solutions . . . confirms Red Hat's intention to compete in the embedded systems marketplace, in which Caldera Systems (among Linux companies) has staked a major claim. Embedded systems, which includes handheld devices, PDA's “smart phones” and other intelligent, information devices, are seen by many in the industry as the next frontier of computing appliances.”

Penn continues, “The merger also increases Red Hat's ability to attract software developers toward their distribution. While development tools for Linux are already readily available, Red Hat's decision to introduce as powerful a development tools company as Cygnus Solutions into its own corporate structure is likely to make the production of new applications for Linux (or, perhaps, more to the point, for Red Hat Linux) much more worthwhile for software developers.”

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