Just think: Some people still don't believe that you can make money from Linux and open-source software. Fools! Red Hat just became the first open-source company to make a cool 2 billion bucks.

Not bad considering Red Hat became the first billion dollar Linux company only four years ago. That may not be unicorn country, but unlike many billion dollar valuation companies, Red Hat did it the old-fashioned way: They earned the money instead of playing upon the gullibility of venture capitalists.

Red Hat's total revenue for its fourth quarter was $544 million. That's up 17 percent in US dollars year-over-year, or 21 percent measured in constant currency. Subscription revenue for the quarter was $480 million, up 18 percent in US dollars year-over-year, or 22 percent measured in constant currency. Subscription revenue in the quarter was 88 percent of total revenue.

Analysts estimated Red Hat would make $534 million.

Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat's president and CEO credits "Enterprises increasingly adopting hybrid cloud infrastructures and open source technologies" for driving the company's strong results. Whitehurst continued, "Customers are demanding technologies that modernize the development, deployment and life-cycle management of applications across hybrid cloud environments. Many are relying on Red Hat to provide both the infrastructure and the application development platforms to run their enterprise applications consistently and reliably across physical, virtual, private cloud and public cloud environments."

For the full 2016 fiscal year, Red Hat's total revenue was $2.05 billion, up 15 percent in US dollars year-over-year, or 21 percent measured in constant currency. Subscription revenue for the full fiscal year was $1.8 billion, up 16 percent in US dollars year-over-year, or 22 percent measured in constant currency. Subscription revenue in the full fiscal year was 88 percent of total revenue.

While Whitehurst credited the cloud, Red Hat's subscription revenue can largely be ascribed to Red Hat's flagship product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Still, RHEL, which is now available on Microsoft Azure, is becoming a prominent cloud operating system.

Subscription revenue from infrastructure-related offerings for the quarter was $391 million, an increase of 15 percent in US dollars year-over-year and 18 percent measured in constant currency. Subscription revenue from application development-related and other emerging technologies offerings for the quarter was $89 million, an increase of 38 percent in US dollars year-over-year and 43 percent measured in constant currency.

Full fiscal year subscription revenue from infrastructure-related offerings was $1.48 billion, an increase of 12 percent in US dollars year-over-year and 18 percent measured in constant currency. Full fiscal year subscription revenue from application development-related and other emerging technologies offerings was $323 million, an increase of 37 percent in US dollars year-over-year and 46 percent measured in constant currency.

GAAP net income for the quarter was $53 million, or $0.29 per diluted share, compared with $48 million, or $0.26 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. After adjustments non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $97 million, or $0.52 per diluted share, as compared to $81 million, or $0.43 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.

Looking ahead for its 2016 FY Red Hat expects to see between $2.380 billion to $2.420 billion. At this rate, Red Hat should easily become the first $3 billion open-source company.

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