I doubt Red Hat spent any money at all on acquiring CentOS. The OS was literally just Red Hat Enterprise Linux with the logos removed and without the subscripti

I doubt Red Hat spent any money at all on acquiring CentOS. The OS was literally just Red Hat Enterprise Linux with the logos removed and without the subscription fee. RH probably just promised to help maintain it and provide infrastructure. The folks who created CentOS didn't do it as a business. It was created because they wanted it to exist.