Red Hat may make money from support, but consider that every time a support case is opened, Red Hat is losing money. Most businesses work very hard to reduce the number of support cases that get opened because of this. Red Hat won't be an exception there.
I really wish Redhat had some much cheaper, "updates only" version of their software.. When I worked in Education, we had a version that was $50/year.. I would love something like that for my own personal use.. and maybe a $100/y version for companies..
Actually, this exists! It's $99 and includes "Eclipse, Eclipse Tooling, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, JBoss SOA Platform, JBoss Enterprise Data Services Platform, JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform, JBoss Operations Network, and one entitlement to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, with built-in development tools, and Red Hat Network Access for development purposes."
the license is not for production machines though.
Also note that you can get free copies of Red Hat Enterprise Linux if you are an ISV developing software for it:
Your good nature will bring you unbounded happiness.
