[muhfuhkuh]

That's not entirely true. Red Hat has stuck to the Open Source and Free Software movement since its founding, and I don't think it has strayed from that or compromised, even when Microsoft offered a "patent deal" then waged a proxy IP war via the SCO lawsuit.

They've been granted some defensive patents, but publicly pledged not to use them except to defend themselves and Open Source software.

They're on track to make their fist billion in revenue at the same point as Microsoft did in its existence.

[cma]

They did so knowingly at the expense of long-term profit?

[muhfuhkuh]

They could've gone into a similar (or probably more lucrative) deal as Novell did when Microsoft gave them $350 Million dollar "patent cooperation" and Suse license over a few years.

Red Hat turned it down outright. Think of how much that would've benefitted Red Hat. That was well more than half of their revenue at the time. They stuck to their principles at the expense of that type of massive profit. It paid off.