When the Novell/Microsoft deal was struck, Red Hat's stock was struck as well. And yet, it turns out that this momentary decline was a temporary one whilst there's no apparent long-term volatility. Not even Oracle's elbow could destroy the prospects of Red Hat, according to one analyst.

Stimson considers the competition from Oracle and Microsoft/Novell "a nonevent so far" as he's seen little evidence that Oracle is winning support business away from Red Hat.

Dana of ZDNet concurs. He even shares some interesting figures.

• Oracle -- Down 3.56%
• Microsoft -- Up 2.7%
• Novell -- Up 8.13%
• RedHat -- Up 36.82%

Red Hat's last financial report was no exception.

"Open-source is not going away and Red Hat is the leader," Chowdhry said in a telephone interview. "Oracle is a nonevent when it comes to open source."

Perhaps Linux companies are as robust as the platform and software which they sell. It is worth mentioning, however, that Red Hat has a series of ongoing buybacks, just like Microsoft.