> except a few 'blessed' distros that will then become industry controlled, and not Linux in spirit anymore
You know, I hear this a lot but seldom hear the details of how it might happen. Industry-controlled UNIX is the reason Linux exists - if you take the spirit away from Linux, it gets forked into another community project. Unless you're stripping it of it's GPL license, Linux will be "Linux in Spirit" until it stops being used altogether.
Linux only exists because it is free and it runs free apps for every category of keyboard-driven task a typical user would want.
The answer to my question of how a predator like IBM is going to take out the other non-RHEL based distros is starting to come into focus. This should help Ubuntu get the Mint monkey off its back too.