Red Hat is boring -- and more open source companies should emulate it

Brick by brick, Red Hat has built itself into a powerhouse without raising piles of VC money. Today's open source upstarts could learn from it

Most open source companies no longer aspire to be the “Red Hat of” this or that market. But guess what? Those same open source companies still have something to learn from Red Hat -- namely, how to be boring.

Not boring in the sense of “these products put me to sleep,” but boring in the sense of thoughtful, consistent growth. While Red Hat can’t boast the GDP-sized profits of an Apple or the still-eye-popping growth of a Facebook, Red Hat has a P/E multiple (75) that suggests investors believe it has high-growth potential, even as it delivers a seemingly pedestrian rate of 15 to 17 percent.

Twitter CEO to developers: We messed up

At the Twitter Flight conference, Jack Dorsey attempts to set a clean slate with disgruntled developers

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, speaking at the Twitter Flight conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, apologized for the company’s subpar relationship with developers and stressed the need for an open dialog.

Developers have led the way in innovating with Twitter, Dorsey said. “Developers took our service from day 1 and made Twitter [have] a much more global reach.” He cited applications that enable a plant that tweets when it wants water and a pothole that tweets to local officials when a vehicle runs over it.