vnunet.com interview: Red Hat chief executive Matthew Szulik

But do investors get this sufficiently? Investors love patents that you can put in the books. Red Hat is not a traditional patent-loving company.

Right. Every great sustainable company started out challenging the historical assumptions and what was viewed with great scepticism when they started. They went through that period of cynicism.

After more than 55 per cent of the market gets behind it, then everybody acknowledges it as being a successful approach to a problem.

Intel is an example when it was competing with Fairchild Semiconductor. In the early 1990s, it was Lotus Development competing against Microsoft.

My view is that the people of our company want to continue to challenge and look for new and innovative ways to solve problems. That requires risk and that requires novelty of thinking.

I think what they are expecting out of me as a leader is to be completely open and transparent. I think if we do this the company will continue to succeed for the next 50 to 100 years.

If we don't, we will end up looking just like the other nuts in the business. That's not something we want.