Why

> As I have pointed out "The main problem is that OEMs test & even validate server/workstation/desktop/laptop hardware for both Microsoft & RedHat OSs on the OEM provided hardware, under agreements which MAY have caveats" that effect competition.

And has anyone ever seen such an agreement Linux-side ? And how would such an agreement stand given that the software parts are all eventually published (nvidia aside which is an nvidia decision Red Hat disagrees with) so it would be mightily hard to hide anything special. The worst that you can say about new Red Hat arrangements is that in some cases sources are not published before Red Hat publishes the corresponding binaries, which is above and beyond what most OSS licensing requires (the whole of RHEL is treated as a GPL product secret building sauce included even though it embarks a lot of components with more lenient licensing).

OEM work with Red Hat because they are not a charity, if working with a few big players is sufficient to address the market why should they expend money working with small fishes ? Their time is valuable too you know.

Customers buy Red Hat because they know it will be there to fix things where their business-critical systems would go titsup (home owners have no such requirements which is why the Linux desktop never flourished, people do not see the point of paying someone for reliable youtube viewing).

> Those statements wouldn't be so galling if Red Hat was the sole or even majority contribute to the open source base Red Hat includes in distribution.

That’s irrelevant. You will pay a plumber an harm and a leg on week ends even though the parts he uses have been conceived by someone else, are readily available in hardware supermarkets, there are lots of online tutorials etc. You will pay an arm and a leg because you want things fixed *now*, he is available, you have no trust in your ability to fix things quickly yourself, and the über scientists that calculated the best materials and gaskets to use are not there (and are quite happy not to be there and deal with customer moods during their day off). And some people will blame the plumber for extortionate galling prices even though the hardware supermarket is this way and everyone else can see they could easily take up plumbing to correct the situation.