Your first assumption, although largely correct as a generality it is not entirely accurate, and at a minimum is not the sole purpose.  That is why companies have mission statements.  They rarely highlight the purpose of making money, although that is often the main purpose even if not specified.  What is Red Hat's mission?  It is listed as:
            To be the catalyst in communities of customers, contributors, and partners creating
            better technology the open source way.

Making things exceedingly difficult would go against the stated mission.  In my opinion it would also go against making money as it would kill the eco system of vendors that support RedHat Enterprise Linux for their applications.

There are so many distributions out there, the biggest way for them to not make money is to become insignificant.  Having free
alternatives like Centos keeps high market share of the EL product and ensures compatibility and a healthy eco system.  If there was not open clones of EL, then ubuntu or something else would take over and the main supported platform of enterprise applications, and then the large enterprises that pay for RedHat support contracts would move completely off.

Having people use Centos or Scientific linux might not directly help the bottom line, but for RedHat it's a lot better than having people use ubuntu or suse.  Oracle not being free could pose a bigger threat, but either RedHat remains on top as they are the main source for good support, or they do not and Oracle will have to pick up the slack for driving RedHat out of business. and what's left of RedHat would have to start using Oracle as TUV...  I don't see too many switching to Oracle besides those that are already Oracle shops.



----- Original Message -----
> From: "Patrick J. LoPresti" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 12:45:01 PM
> Subject: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
> 
> RedHat is a company. Companies exist for the sole purpose of making
> money. Every action by any company -- literally every single action,
> ever -- is motivated by that goal.
> 
> The question you should be asking is: How does Red Hat believe this
> move is going to make them money?
> 
> Those were statements of fact. What follows is merely my opinion.
> 
> Right now, anybody can easily get for free the same thing Red Hat
> sells, and their #1 competitor is taking their products, augmenting
> them, and reselling them. If you think Red Hat perceives this as
> being
> in their financial interest, I think you are out of your mind.
> 
> SRPMs will go away and be replaced by an ever-moving git tree. Red
> Hat
> will make it as hard as legally possible to rebuild their commercial
> releases. The primary target of this move is Oracle, but Scientific
> Linux will be collateral damage.
> 
> I consider all of this pretty obvious, but perhaps I am wrong. I hope
> I am.
> 
>  - Pat
>