At the same time, Red Hat released the first version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1. The Army deployed Red Hat’s operating system in its Blue Force Tracker system, which lived in jeeps and tanks on the battlefield. Major General Nicholas Justice, the man responsible for Blue Force Tracker, said later:

“When we rolled into Baghdad, we did it using open source.”1

To this day, the U.S. Army remains one of Red Hat’s largest customers by volume. Red Hat was recently made part of the Army’s Common Operating Environment, which is their enterprise standard.

https://web.archive.org/web/20250226064336/https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-Hats-decade-of-collaboration-with-government-and-the-open-source-community