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Red Hat Inc. co-founder and former CEO Bob Young, 50, has resigned from the board of directors of the enterprise Linux company he co-founded with Mark Ewing.
The resignation was official Oct. 12, but Red Hat chose to release the information Tuesday.
Young leaves Red Hat in good shape. The 12-year-old company, based in Raleigh, N.C., is profitable and ranks first in enterprise Linux market share (at around 52 percent), ahead of Novell SuSE, Debian, Cobalt, Mandriva and Gentoo, according to IT analytical firm Netcraft.
Young served as CEO at Red Hat from 1995 to 1999, when he joined the companys board.
He says he has no intention of retiring from business; Young plans to concentrate on the development of his latest venture, Lulu.com, an independent online publishing marketplace he started three years ago.
Lulu.com is a site that allows content creators and owners to bring work directly to market without surrendering control of their intellectual property.
Young also owns the Hamilton Wildcats, a Canadian Football League franchise.
“In a funny way, my resignation is perhaps the finest compliment I can pay to everyone associated with Red Hat today; I have complete confidence in the future of the company,” said Young.
Young said that one of the reasons hes leaving the Red Hat board is because it was taking too much time away from the development of his new project and from running the football team.
Red Hat Chairman and CEO Matthew Szulik said that “Bobs vision for brand relevance in technology was instrumental in the growth and development of Red Hat. We are grateful for his vision and service to help guide our direction as part of the board of directors and will miss his wise counsel and insightful views on the direction of technology.”
Young, who often refers to himself as a “serial entrepreneur,” is a native of Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, and a 1976 graduate of the University of Toronto.
He is a founder of The Center for the Public Domain (1999), a nonprofit foundation that supports the growth of a public domain of knowledge and the arts.