Those are good questions. As I think about it more, in the early days, Microsoft stirred up a lot of fear around open source and the GPL specifically. It was

Those are good questions. As I think about it more, in the early days, Microsoft stirred up a lot of fear around open source and the GPL specifically. It was viral, it would get you sued for copyright infringment (see: SCO), it would get you sued for patent infringement, it was terrible quality, hard to install, changes all the time, the project might be abandoned, etc., etc. So yeah, maybe it wasn't so much GPL specifically (except that "viral" threat), but overall Microsoft reinforced a bunch of concerns associated with open source and Red Hat was able to address those concerns.