Free Software For Free vs Free Software For Sale
Red Hat offers "free-as-in-freedom" software, for sale. Those who pay for the software also receive technical support services as part of their purchase agreements.
Ubuntu and the company behind it (Canonical) offer "free software" at no charge, and earn revenue by selling technical support for their software.
Linux Mint offers "free software" at no charge, and doesn't require a fee for any services provided by Linux Mint. Instead all the funding for Linux Mint is from voluntary donations, and a substantial portion of the time that goes in to creating and supporting Linux Mint is time "donated" by volunteers.
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[edit] Revenue Comparison
In terms of revenue, Red Hat is probably the biggest Linux vendor (and the one most closely following the model of "sell software freedom, for money"
Canonical is next, with their model of selling support while giving away software for free.
Mint is last among these three companies in terms of revenue - they give away their software and only offer free tech support (from unpaid volunteers -- a type of support which is also available in the Red Hat and Ubuntu communities).
So the companies that focus more on "selling" and less on voluntary donations of time and money have greater revenue.
[edit] Contribution to Open Source Operating Systems
Red Hat is undisputed as the greatest contributor to the Linux Kernel in terms of lines of code. When it comes to user interfaces and ease-of-use, the contribution of each company is substantial, but difficult to compare. In terms of lines of code and number of person-hours contributed by computer programmers, the companies with greater revenue have probably contributed more. (That is, Red Hat, then Canonical, and lastly Linux Mint).
[edit] Popularity
Among Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Mint, which is most popular? This seems to be the reverse of which generate the most revenue. By some accounts, the distributions that are most "beginner-friendly" and easy to use are also the ones that are the most popular.
Distrowatch.com is a clear-cut measure of popularity but only measures page-hits rather than number of Linux installs. According to Distrowatch's page hit rankings, Linux Mint is the most popular. Distrowatch may (or may not) also be a useful indicator of how many NEW users are taking up each operating system, and which operating system is easiest to use.
Ubuntu is the second most popular, while Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the only one of the three that is not available free-of-charge) falls far below in terms of popularity.
So it seems that selling products and services is good for revenue, but not good for popularity.
[edit] Coopetition
Each of these distributions helps make Linux available to a great many individuals. Each contributes useful code to the Free Software world. Together, they cooperate to advance the Free Software movement and they all borrow code, programmers, users, and ideas from the others. It's both a competition for limited resources, and a cooperation to enrich the world of free software.
