Robert Young is a serial entrepreneur who is best known for founding

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become ass ...

Inc., the open source software company. He owns the franchises for Forge FC of the Canadian Premier League as well as the

Hamilton Tiger-Cats The Hamilton Tiger-Cats are a professional Canadian football team based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. They are currently members of the East Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL). The Tiger-Cats play their home games at Tim Hortons Fiel ...

of the Canadian Football League for which he serves as self-styled Caretaker of the team.

Early life

He was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He attended Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Victoria College at the University of Toronto.

Career

Prior to

, Young built a couple of computer rental and leasing businesses, including founding Vernon Computer Rentals in 1984. Descendants of Vernon are still operating under that name. After leaving Vernon, Young founded the ACC Corp Inc. in 1993. Marc Ewing and Young co-founded open-source software company Red Hat. Red Hat was a member of the S&P 500 Index before being purchased by IBM on July 9, 2019. Marc Ewing and Young's partnership started in 1994 when ACC acquired the Red Hat trademarks from Ewing. In early 1995, ACC changed its name to Red Hat Software, which has subsequently been shortened to simply Red Hat, Inc. Young served as Red Hat's CEO until 1999. In 2002, Young founded

Lulu.com Lulu Press, Inc., doing business under trade name Lulu, is an online print-on-demand, self-publishing, and distribution platform. By 2014, it had issued approximately two million titles. The company's founder is Red Hat co-founder Bob Young. Lu ...

, a print-on-demand,

self-publishing Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. The term usually refers to written media, such as books and magazines, either as an ebook or as a physical copy using POD (pr ...

company, and served as CEO. In 2006, Young established the Lulu Blooker Prize, a book prize for books that began as blogs. He launched the prize partly as a means to promote Lulu. Young served as CEO of PrecisionHawk, a commercial drone technology company, from 2015 to 2017. Prior to being named PrecisionHawk's CEO in 2015, he was an early investor in the company. He continues to serve on its board as Chairman. Young also co-founded ''

Linux Journal ''Linux Journal'' (''LJ'') is an American monthly technology magazine originally published by Specialized System Consultants, Inc. (SSC) in Seattle, Washington since 1994. In December 2006 the publisher changed to Belltown Media, Inc. in Houston ...

'' in 1994, and in 2003, he purchased the

of the Canadian Football League. In 2022, he sold minority stakes in the Tiger-Cats to Jim Lawson, team President Scott Mitchell, and American steel manufacturer

Stelco Stelco Holdings Inc. (known as U.S. Steel Canada from 2007 to 2016) is a Canadian steel company based in Hamilton, Ontario. Stelco was founded in 1910 from the amalgamation of several smaller firms. It continued on for almost 100 years, until it ...

. Young focuses his philanthropic efforts on access to information and advancement of knowledge. In 1999, he co-founded The Center for the Public Domain. Young has supported the Creative Commons, Public Knowledge.org, the

Dictionary of Old English ''The Dictionary of Old English'' (''DOE'') is a dictionary of the Old English language, published by the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, under the direction of Angus Cameron, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey, an ...

, Loran Scholarship Foundation, ibiblio.org, and the NCSU eGames, among others.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, Bob Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Businesspeople from Ontario Open source people Red Hat people University of Toronto alumni People from Hamilton, Ontario Hamilton Tiger-Cats owners Forge FC non-playing staff