$99 from a vendor for all of their sales is not a big financial deal.
The interesting part comes the first time Microsoft decides to revoke a competitor's key as part of a Windows update, and people who dual-boot find out about it because they no longer can dual-boot. Even if the mess gets fixed quickly, it will be a cause of FUD. How blatant will they be in taking advantage of that?
>Sorry, didn't realise the fee was only $99; you're right, that's more of a nuisance fee than anything else
That's not your fault. It's part the press writing flamebait headlines to drive page hits and intentional FUD from some people repeating the story as 'RedHat forced to pay MS' and gloss over the $99/year which won't even start to mitigate MS' cost to run such a signing service.
The interesting part comes the first time Microsoft decides to revoke a competitor's key as part of a Windows update, and people who dual-boot find out about it because they no longer can dual-boot. Even if the mess gets fixed quickly, it will be a cause of FUD. How blatant will they be in taking advantage of that?