The way to make money with Open Source is to incorporate it into products, which is why hardware makers are indeed a driving force behind Open Source development.

True "Open Source companies" generally sell their services and development resources to such hardware makers. Such as mine and quite a few others who develop software for Nokia, in addition to their internal software teams.

It is a common mistake to believe, that software companies are legit only if they make their money from selling or otherwise monetizing software.

The bottom line is, people and companies make money from Open Source software.

Yes, if you "sell something" by opposition as "not sell something because the whole package is too expensive", you actually make money. But if you know better, talk to IBM, I'm sure their model is crap and they want to change it.

Nokia contribution didn't seem to help them that much, and funnily enough, they dropped it.

neither redhat nor Novell are hardware companies.
they are the two leading (commercial) /Linux distributions.

Novell is no more.

so don't you think IBM would be happier (= making more money) without open source GNU/Linux?

Nokia don't contribute to linux to make money. They hate money, all they care about is connecting people. Boot your phone and see for yourself.

Novell is a leading provider of infrastructure software. Our vision is helping people and technology to work as one. Our mission is to help customers reduce...

alive and kicking, thanks for asking...