From the Yet, They Continue to be Profitable dept.:
...Eventually, Red Hat effectively abandoned its desktop audience, to focus on the more lucrative corporate market. Then, a very smart man called Mark Shuttleworth made 500 million dollars in the .com boom, learned Russian from scratch, went to space, came back in one piece, funded several charities focussing on South Africa, and... oh yes, he created Ubuntu Linux.

...I am convinced that Red Hat is now starting to realise that losing their desktop users didn’t just mean “losing the suckers who didn’t pay a cent anyway� (this is not a quote, by the way), because a lot of those “suckers� were system administrators, who will soon have to decide between Red Hat Linux and Ubuntu Server. And when you use Ubuntu Server as your home system, the choice really can go either way.

By abandoning their desktop users, Red Hat has effectively shot itself in the foot. Funnily enough, they kept on chasing the mirage of thousands of soul-less corporate customers with the real money. However, the bleeding didn’t stop altogether, and behind those faceless corporations there are thousands of system administrators who now use Ubuntu Linux rather than Red Hat Linux.

freesoftwaremagazine.com