At this time I know as much as you do. Big Blue has begun the acquisition process to absorb the largest Linux maintenance organization (in control of its own popular server Linux distribution) and this will affect many other smaller organizations that rely on Red Hat OS's. What will happen and what is IBM's motive here?
The critical theory is that IBM is no longer a tech company but a holding company which purchases income streams they do not see a need to create internally (higher cost). If these purchased acquisitions do not continue to perform, their role in IBM is superseded by later acquisitions. The tech status is maintained in order to convince Wall Street that nothing has changed in the board room over the decades.
A pragmatic theory is that, although the original generations of engineers have left the boardroom, IBM soldiers on by purchasing concerns representing the Next Big Thing, thus remaining relevant. In tech, things change quite a bit, and so a chameleon has a good chance of survival. The adaptor (the most flexible actor) is the survivor.
From the small company's perspective, if the worst happens and Red Hat support suffers, is a migration to another distribution of Linux possible and reasonable? My guess is yes, since Nix-based systems are very similar to each other and control of the Linux kernel is not present at Red Hat itself. Candidates? I dunno. Debian is being hotly discussed. Old timers would look at BSD versions. Operations with fat budgets may consider OSX Server (out since 1999). Stay tuned!
