Well, better late than never: We're at the tail end of season three, and the city of Raleigh has finally found a title sponsor for the Downtown Raleigh Amphitheater. Henceforth, the 5,600-capacity outdoor concert venue will be known as the Red Hat Amphitheater, as sponsored by open-source software company Red Hat (a downtown Raleigh tenant since 2011).

The deal is effective immediately and runs for five years, into September 2016. According to Doug Grissom with the Raleigh Convention Center, Red Hat is paying $235,000 a year, which comes to $1.175 million over the course of the deal.

Since opening in June 2010, the amphitheater has hosted big acts including Mumford & Sons, Wiz Khalifa and My Morning Jacket. There are seven events still to go this season, highlighted by Florence + the Machine on Sept. 21 and Gotye on Oct. 1.

Open source software-maker Red Hat took to its blog Wednesday to speak out against controversial Internet legislation meant to prevent online piracy.

Red Hat and other critics of the Stop Online Piracy and the Protect IP acts, known as SOPA and PIPA, claim that the legislation would censor the Internet and throttle innovative American businesses.

"What we really do depends on the freedom of the Internet, and anything that could lead to greater censorship is of serious concern to us," said Rob Tiller, a member of Red Hat's legal team.

Red Hat's blog post stated that the legislation "poses a threat to the future success of Red Hat and other innovative companies" because the bills overreach, raising "enormous concerns for North Carolina home grown technology companies."

Red Hat, the Triangle software company, has been promised several years in free rent and huge discounts in other years as part of a sweet deal from Progress Energy to sublease its office building in downtown Raleigh.

Red Hat reported this week in a federal regulatory filing that it expects to receive at least $28 million from Progress toward its real estate rent. That represents a 32 percent discount over the life of the $87 million lease.

The terms of the real estate lease effectively mean that Red Hat will be paid by Progress, a Fortune 500 electric utility, to occupy the 19-story building for a chunk of the long-term lease through 2035..

Officials at Progress and Red Hat could not be reached for comment to elaborate on their real estate contract. However, Progress has been under pressure to find a tenant to occupy the headquarters it plans to dismantle as part of its corporate merger with Charlotte-based Duke Energy.

Red Hat has signed a letter of intent to lease Two Progress Plaza, the 19-story building on Davie Street now occupied by Raleigh-based energy company.

Red Hat spokeswoman Leigh Day said the letter of intent is nonbinding and that no formal lease has been signed as of yet.

The Raleigh software firm plans to move all of its Raleigh workers, roughly 600 employees, into the building sometime in the future.

The timing of the move has not been determined, Day said.

Red Hat announced earlier this year that it would move to a new headquarters somewhere in Wake County. The company was also considering constructing a new building on several sites in downtown and around the country.

The pending merger of Duke Energy and Progress Energy made Two Progress Plaza a possibility.

Red Hat, the Raleigh software company with a booming business, gave its top executives modest annual raises this week.

CEO Jim Whitehurst's base salary rose to $775,000, for example, a 3 percent increase, Red Hat reported in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing today. Chief financial officer Charlie Peters and others got similar raises.

The base salaries are just a small part of the executives' total compensation. Whitehurst also could receive a bonus of up to $775,000 if Red Hat meets various financial and other goals, plus other pay.

Last year, Whitehurst made $8.97 million, including $7.16 million in stock awards, Red Hat disclosed in a previous SEC filing. That made him one of the Triangle's highest paid CEOs.

A Los Angeles investor has voluntarily dismissed a lawsuit he filed earlier this year against Matthew Szulik, the former chairman and CEO of Red Hat.

The suit, filed by Jason Galanis in federal court in Massachusetts, alleged that Szulik received millions from illegal security sales as part of an elaborate tax-evasion scheme.

Szulik described the accusations as "utter nonsense" in a statement released through his lawyer shortly after the suit was filed in January. He said Galanis was attempting to divert attention from a lawsuit that his own family filed in federal court in North Carolina late last year.

Since the dismissal, Szulik's lawyers have filed a motion seeking more than $100,000 in attorney's fees from Galanis.

Galanis' lawyers are objecting to both the amount of attorney fees Szulik is claiming and the repayment demand itself.

Triangle businesses with operations in Japan are working quickly to make sure employees are safe after the massive earthquake and tsunami.

Everyone at the Tokyo office of Raleigh-based Red Hat was accounted for, said spokeswoman Kara Schiltz. As of Friday morning, that area of Tokyo still had power, although employees have felt smaller aftershocks.

At Durham-based Quintiles, it will take time to contact all 2,300 personnel in Japan, said spokesman Phil Bridges. Many of those employees are sales representatives and not based at one of the pharmaceutical services company's seven offices in Japan.

Local Quintiles officials have reached some Japanese workers, mostly through e-mail because landline phones are jammed, Bridges said.

WRAL will air a documentary tonight in which CEOs of three North Carolina tech companies reveal the secrets to success.

The CEOs of Cree, Red Hat and SAS reveal how their companies earned billions while others went belly up.  The program is hosted by WRAL News anchor Gerald Owens.

A Los Angeles investor has sued Matthew Szulik, the former chairman and CEO of Red Hat, saying that he is pursuing an elaborate tax-evasion scheme that involves claiming millions of dollars in losses on illegal security sales.

Jason Galanis filed the suit in federal court in Massachusetts on Tuesday. It says that, beginning in 2008, Szulik started pressuring his investment advisors to get him out of investments that could not be easily sold.

The suit alleges Szulik ended up receiving $30 million in funds from Galanis or companies owned by Galanis in return for the unmarketable securities.

In a statement, Szulik said Galanis' lawsuit is an attempt to divert attention from his own efforts to recover stolen funds.

"For the past year, I have invested substantial time and resources in uncovering the fraud perpetuated on me and my family by our former investment advisor, TAG Virgin Islands, and its principal, James Tagliaferri, who have a close association with Mr. Galanis, as Galanis's complaint admits," Szulik said. 

"Galanis's frivolous complaint, based entirely on speculation, not facts, is clearly just an effort to divert attention from the lawsuit we filed in federal court last month, alleging widespread fraud. The purported tax evasion scheme Galanis and his attorneys alleged against me is utter nonsense.  No one would scheme to lose $60 million in order to deduct some losses on his taxes; any rational person would rather earn a profit and keep most of that profit after paying taxes.

Last month, Szulik filed a $60 million lawsuit against his family's former financial advisers. The suit accuses the investment management firm TAG Virgin Islands of losing $60 million through improper investments and fraud.

The Szuliks also accuse TAG of lending more than $4 million of their money to companies tied to Jason and Jared Galanis. The brothers were at one time affiliated with the Penthouse media group.
 

Among those on the losing end of Monday's announcement that Red Hat would be staying in Wake County was Durham's American Tobacco Campus.

American Tobacco made an aggressive pitch to try and win over Red Hat, and at the annual Downtown Durham Inc. luncheon in November Jim Goodmon (left), CEO of Capitol Broadcasting, the owner of American Tobacco, told the crowd that he intended to win Red Hat.

Luring Red Hat to Durham would have been a major coup, particularly since ATC just recently landed the cellphone maker HTC.