Sun Microsystems' Next Linux Move (Seeking Alpha)

That obviously makes perfect sense for Sun.

They are first and foremost a hardware vendor; they want to marginalize the "independent" OS
vendors as much as possible and eat into their margins. (Just like Oracle as an application
vendor tries to marginalize everything below their apps.)

On the other hand, it doesn't mean that Red Hat or Novell lose any business; if the effect of
Sun's action is growing the market, this can be beneficial to everyone involved.