Apparently, one of the reasons that RedHat survived the dotcom crash was that they were absolutely merciless about companies that didn't pay on time for RedHat'

Apparently, one of the reasons that RedHat survived the dotcom crash was that they were absolutely merciless about companies that didn't pay on time for RedHat's engineering/consulting services. I recall someone who had several on-site RedHat engineers at his company, doing some kind of Linux work. The company missed one Friday payment to RedHat. Every single RedHat engineer was gone the following Monday, never to return.