At a time when the commercial BSD companies were fighting among themselves and allowing their technology to become stale and remain expensive, Linux came along with RedHat and SuSE.

Those two made an effort to meet directly with business leaders, attend all the trade shows, and gave their product away for free. Their model was at least as shocking as their license; hitherto, hardly any business software was free and paired with consulting services. It caused a storm, and gave birth to a whole industry that wasn't possible under the expensive BSD model.