Red Hat is to some extent protected from acquisition by the ideological poison pill. Because there's no IP (open source), the value of the company is basically the engineering talent, which enables the level of service Red Hat provides. Many of those engineers have very strong opinions about FOSS.

The second a Microsoft (or worse, an Oracle) tried to acquire Red Hat, a huge portion of that talent would walk out the door.

There is more chance of the pope converting to Islam, then MS acquiring Red Hat. That is one acquisition that would turn to shit over night, and MS would be left with just some logos, as the companies main assets (its engineering) would all walk out the door, followed by customers not renewing subscriptions.

2017 forecast... Microsoft acquires Canonical.