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In an interesting post on a customer visit, Jonathan Schwartz has this exchange on RedHat, Linux, and lock in:

And then I asked about IBM. And apparently they'd just been with OSDL, who'd evangelized that with open source, there was no lock in. When I pointed out that OSDL was led by a 17-year IBM veteran who should know better, the CIO started laughing as if I was joking. So I suggested they read the OSDL website , and revisit some software basics. IBM told him they couldn't get locked in with linux. And I said, "nice vision, but Red Hat has you locked already." The CIO shrugged, "nah, it's open source." My response, "Have you tried replacing what you're deploying?" He asked his lieutenant, who said "we can't get vendors to qualify to any distribution other than Red Hat. We don't have a choice. He's right." IBM, up to its old tricks again.

That's increasingly the case in the Java app server world (which is fascinating all by itself - isn't Java supposed to be x-platform?). Oddly, the biggest issues we have with Linux is on Red Hat itself. We've had library issues, and recently we've had problems reported on Fedora Core3. We've had nothing similar reported on other Linux distros. It would be interesting to know whether it's ineptness on their part, or part of a plan.