May 9, 1969 — Marc Ewing Was Born
May 9, 1969
Marc Ewing, founder of Red Hat, became one of the key figures in the worlds of open source and Linux. In the early 1990s, when Linux was still seen as an operating system for students and hackers, Marc Ewing and Bob Young created Red Hat Linux — a Linux distribution aimed at corporate use. It was much easier to install and use than most Linux systems of the time. Ewing and Young founded Red Hat and distributed their Linux system to corporations.
Oddly enough, the success of a paid Linux distribution helped the entire open-source ecosystem:
It legitimized open source for corporations
It introduced the open source + support business model
Red Hat created the free Fedora distribution, still considered one of the best Linux systems
The company invested huge amounts of money into Linux kernel development, helping thousands of other distributions evolve as well
Marc Ewing does not maintain a strong public presence today, but there is little doubt that he played a huge role in everything listed above.