1. That's actually not true; I even checked before posting. Check out their annual report, page 43: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/RHAT/2659386793x0x581

1. That's actually not true; I even checked before posting. Check out their annual report, page 43: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/RHAT/2659386793x0x581760/6FEDF811-091A-49BB-8EB2-83C31DC561AB/Annual_Report_062512_Final_Bookmarked.pdf http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/RHAT/2659386793x0x581... (numbers are in thousands) > Subscriptions ... $ 965,575 > Training and services ... 167,528 They do, in fact, make most of their money from subscriptions (yes, selling FOSS), not training and services. 2. I apologize, I was unclear. I was referring to licenses that bore revenue, not all licenses. You need to buy a license to run RHEL, even if you can run all of the same actual software (just without the branding) in the form of CentOS or other distros. I didn't really mean "unlicensed", since obviously all of the software is under the GPL or other free software licenses, I meant "without buying a license from Red Hat". I was not trying to imply people were ripping off Red Hat, just that they aren't paying for it. And no, I don't forget that Fedora feeds back into Red Hat. I explicitly listed Fedora as part of the strategy for how to make money selling free software; you sell a supported, branded, stable version to corporations, and release a free, frequently updated, bleeding edge for the community. That second part is important because it helps drive innovation, and allows you to take advantage of collaboration from outside contributors, while still deriving revenue from your enterprise distro. I'm just not sure if Microsoft could continue to make the kind of money that they do, if they chose to go a Red Hat route, as there would be a large number of people who would choose to run free-as-in-beer distros (the Windows equivalent of CentOS or Fedora) rather than a paid version of Windows. Red Hat shows that it is possible to get people to buy paid licenses for free software; but I don't know if there are enough people for that to be a strategically viable move for Microsoft.