[_ph_]

Red Hat is selling RH to gain their revenue, but they know that they have a limited audience which is willing to pay for their services. The rest of the Linux world expects Linux to be free. So instead of pushing them towards other distributions they keep those in the Red Hat universe by supporting the "free" versions of RH Linux.

It also makes it easier for any open source author to test their software on Red Hat, as there is always a free version available.