"You might pick up a call you wouldn't normally, or someone could try to hijack your number and make calls to other people, " says Forrester Research analyst Maribel Lopez.
Mr. Samit: The big guys who were out there 10 years ago worked peer-to-peer, so if you did a business call with someone in China they didn't really care if the image froze up every few seconds.
She said someone at the embassy picked up the phone on Sunday and transferred her call to a recording advising callers to visit the U.S. government website.
Red Hat and Novell, its main rival, still make money by giving away Linux and charging for support: customers sign up for a subscription that gives them the right to all the updates and someone to call if something goes wrong.