Taking IBM as an example, they were one of the first in 2000 to make Linux business a reality, because in doing so, it makes their own Aix development costs lower, and eventually played so well that they own Red-Hat, without which, many key projects like GCC and GNOME would lose their main source of income.

The other UNIX vendors that went out of business thanks to Linux's free beer, or Microsoft and Apple's issues trying to sell licenses for their OSes on the server room, both now supporting Linux VMs as "The Year of Desktop Linux", are good examples that when it is free, everyone takes it no matter how it goes.