[ Thanks to smk for this link.
]
“It’s not just Sun Solaris that Red Hat is winning
customers from, but from other Linux distributions as well. Earlier
this year, Whitehurst noted that Red Hat was beginning to make a
committed effort to target free Linux users for conversion to
paying enterprise Linux subscriptions. It’s an effort that is now
paying off, the company said.“Whitehurst noted that Red Hat struck two sizable free-to-paid
deals during its second quarter.“”One of the free-to-pay deals was a multimillion dollar deal
with a financial services customer,” Red Hat CFO Charlie Peters
said. “This customer chose to migrate back to Red Hat after using a
competitor’s Linux provided to them through free coupons.” While
Peters didn’t disclose further details on the parties involved, the
transaction may have been related to the Microsoft Novell
agreement, which involves Microsoft reselling Linux through a
coupon offer.”