Robert Young is a
serial entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...
who is best known for founding
Red Hat Inc., the open source software company. He owns the franchises for
Forge FC
Forge FC is a Canadian professional soccer club based in Hamilton, Ontario, that competes in the Canadian Premier League, the top tier of Canadian soccer. The club plays its home matches at Tim Hortons Field. Forge FC joined the CPL in 2019 as ...
of the
Canadian Premier League
The Canadian Premier League (CPL or CanPL; french: Première ligue canadienne, links=no) is a professional men's soccer league in Canada. At the top of the Canadian soccer league system, it is the country's primary national soccer league compe ...
as well as the
Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the
Canadian Football League
The Canadian Football League (CFL; french: Ligue canadienne de football—LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a ci ...
for which he serves as self-styled Caretaker of the team.
Early life
He was born in
Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Ontario. Hamilton has a Canada 2016 Census, population of 569,353, and its Census Metropolitan Area, census metropolitan area, which includes Burlington, ...
, Canada.
He attended
Trinity College School
Trinity College School (TCS) is a co-educational, independent boarding and day school located in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada. TCS was founded on May 1, 1865, more than two years before Canadian Confederation. It includes a Senior School ...
in
Port Hope, Ontario. He received a Bachelor of Arts from
Victoria College at the
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 ...
.
Career
Prior to
Red Hat, 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
Marc Ewing is an American computer engineer and entrepreneur. He is the creator and originator of the Red Hat brand of software, most notably the Red Hat range of Linux operating system distributions. He was involved in the 86open project in t ...
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, a
print-on-demand
Print on demand (POD) is a printing technology and business process in which book copies (or other documents, packaging or materials) are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints of single or small quantities. While oth ...
,
self-publishing 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
PrecisionHawk is a commercial drone and data company. Founded in 2010, PrecisionHawk is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina with another global office in Toronto, Canada and satellite offices around the world. PrecisionHawk is a manufactur ...
, 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'' in 1994, and in 2003, he purchased the
Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the
Canadian Football League
The Canadian Football League (CFL; french: Ligue canadienne de football—LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a ci ...
. In 2022, he sold minority stakes in the Tiger-Cats to
Jim Lawson, team President Scott Mitchell, and American steel manufacturer
Stelco.
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, Loran Scholarship Foundation,
ibiblio.org
ibiblio (formerly SunSITE.unc.edu and MetaLab.unc.edu) is a "collection of collections", and hosts a diverse range of publicly available information and open source content, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics ...
, 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