If you don't like the idea of relying on RedHat to play with this tech, remember that it is Open Source. Download it, use it, heck make a business that builds on it.

  https://github.com/openshift/crankcase
  https://github.com/openshift/os-client-tools
  https://openshift.redhat.com/community/wiki/build-your-own

(I will say though: they make it extremely easy to get started and I really like using OpenShift so far. I've never used Heroku, but if it's this user friendly i'd definitely have used it before... Why don't they have a free offering for people to test out the service?)