Red Hat CTO to step down

After more than a decade in the executive management ranks, a key coporate leader at Red Hat will soon hang his crimson fedora somewhere else. Earlier today, the global open source software titan announced the resignation of Brian Stevens from his long-held post as CTO.

Red Hat did not specify a reason for Stevens' departure. He will be replaced on an interim basis by Paul Cormier, the company's president of products and technologies. Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst commended Stevens in the release announcing the change.

"We want to thank Brian for his years of service and numerous contributions to Red Hat's business," Whitehurst said. "We wish him well in his future endeavors."

According to his LinkedIn profile, Stevens has been a board member at several technology entities in the recent past, including business intelligence firm Pentaho, data storage solutions provider DataGravity, the OpenStack Foundation, and the Institue of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Stevens holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from University of New Hampshire, and a master's degree in computer systems from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Stevens' Red Hat corporate bio credits him, during his long tenure at the company, with "providing vision and leadership for Red Hat's technology strategy globally, encompassing Linux, virtualization, middleware, storage, big data and cloud computing." Prior to starting at Red Hat in 2001, Stevens served as CTO at now-defunct Mission Critical Linux. He launched his IT career with a 14-year stint at Digital Equipment.

In a 2006 interview with technology blogger Matt Asay, Stevens gave insight into how Red Hat functions as a business despite creating open-source products. "We put our 600-plus engineers out in the open in the open source development community, where they are known for the code they write, not the company they work for," Stevens said. "Ownership of the code isn't what drives us — creation of compelling new technology drives us. Our business model allows us to give away the code, deliver strong customer value, and still make money in the process."