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Comment by happy-go-lucky | Hacker News Reader

> "The $34 billion success has nothing to do with me. I will take some credit for spotting the initial opportunity. The actual execution of that opportunity, the credit goes to much smarter guys than me."

I respect Young for such an honest attribution.

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"Young now calls his wife "probably the single-most important contributor" to the initial success of Red Hat. "Without my wife Nancy's sterling credit rating, I wouldn't been able to raise the money that got us to profitability," he says."

I can relate to this.

totally appreciate his humility but also think he can take a little more credit.

i'd (briefly) considered creating a commercial linux company way back when, but didn't have the wherewithal or gumption to do so. a key ingredient is being able to get started, attract and accept help, and then have enough sense to give others room to work.

He did leave the company 13 years ago as far as I can tell

That might be, but by the late 90s my first few stabs at Linux were using Red Hat because it was far enough along that books were published and available at my local book store (I did also try Yellow Dog, a Red Hat variant, when repurposing an old PowerPC). By the early 2000s I saw box sets in Best Buy. In my industry, most of the large companies moved from IRIX to Red Hat and have been using them since. Most of the others moved to a different free distro, then to CentOS.

Sure, and it seems like he's happy to take credit for that era, but most of Red Hats value came from the time after Young left, and I don't really think it's modesty for him to not take credit for that

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