Despite a rotten economy, Red Hat delivered a healthy 28% revenue hike when in reported its second fiscal quarter Wednesday and an even better 53% boost in earnings. Total revenues came in at $281.3 million against a consensus of $271.2 million and its own predictions of seeing $270 million-$272 million.

It put 29 cents a share on the table when the Street was figuring 25 cents. That kinda income translates into $40 million compared to $23.7 million a year ago.

The company said deferred revenue stood at $813 million, up 25% year-over-year. Subscription revenue in the quarter was worth $238.3 million, up 28%.

The company attributed its above-guidance performance to execution and demand and pointed out that revenue growth has been accelerating for the last four quarters. It figures it'll close its fiscal year at the end of February as the "first billion-dollar open source software vendor." Guess it's ignoring MySQL.

Red Hat's got a comfortable $1.3 billion in the bank.