Tesla’s Elon Musk has the right idea, says Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Raleigh-based Red Hat.

Whitehurst, chatting hours after Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) announced a 17 percent revenue jump in the first quarter, says the Tesla CEO was on point when he decided to make his cars’ patents open-source.

And he saw it coming – well, maybe not Musk’s announcement specifically.

But throughout our conversations over the past two years, Whitehurst has been bullish about his belief that open-source technology…