Canonical has all the right in the world to use Red Hats work. And I think they should. It is a fundamental strength of Open Source that you can just take the work of others.

You have to free yourself from the notion of "stealing" work others did or paid for.

I think Mark has a strong sense where things are heading and as Linux matures there will be more colaboration.
I see a future where Novell, Canonical, Oracle and Red Hat ship the same Kernel, gcc etc. in their Enterprise offerings.

Thing is as long as Red Hat will do most of the heavy lifting they will make most of the decisions and really conserative customers will still buy Red Hat.

It might hurt Red Hats bottom line but it will be good for Linux (-User) in gerneral. ( Although it might just make the whole market for all Linux vendors bigger .. thus still adding to value to Red Hat )

With Open Source there can be no Microsoft making 10+ billion US$ in profits ( like 50 Euro :P ) each year with software alone.
Just get used to it.