Red Hat hires top Netscape exec – did we say IPO?

Red Hat's campaign to add weight to its management has continued with the hiring of Eric Hahn, formerly of Netscape, as chief technology officer. He arrived at Netscape when the company bought his company, Collabra, and was general manager of Netscape's server products division. A couple of weeks ago we noted that Red Hat seemed to be hiring the kind of expertise it would need for an IPO (Red Hat COO could signal IPO). Hahn's addition sort of relates to this, because although he will have an obvious and direct role in growing Red Hat's business in the ISP and high end server end of the business, he's not going to come cheap. Before founding Collabra (from whose sale he will have made a buck or two) Hahn was GM of Lotus' cc:Mail division. To induce him to join Red Hat, we reckon, stock options will assuredly have been waggled. "I'm thrilled and honored to be able to work to advance this important new paradigm for building and delivering world-class software," the lad tells us, but fails to say "and vested." ®