This is exactly the post I was trying to find today as I wondered the same thing about Red Hat and IBM having leverage over these projects.
I don’t know to what extent that happens, but any FOSS project being used to benefit a profit driven company (the software engineering giant IBM in this case) is a big red flag for me.
Most of the fundamental packages in your Linux distribution are primarily written by Red Hat. Do you use Glibc, GCC, gnu utils, systemd, GNOME, podman, pipewire, Wayland, Xorg, or Flatpak for starters?
Red Hat is hardly a free rider in the open source world.
It is also worth noting that Red Hat created the Fedora Project. They created it so they could have RHEL (corporate) and Fedora (community) instead of just Red Hat Linux which they had before.
It always makes me laugh when people worry about Red Hat “taking Fedora corporate”. Fedora was created explicitly to be the community offering and is a key part of the Red Hat strategy. I guess not everybody knows their Linux history.
Many of the Fedora leaders and maintainers are Red Hat employees.
As for US influence, that has always been a thing. US law dominates the thinking. What you really need to worry about is the Linux Foundation.
any FOSS project being used to benefit a profit driven company
That’s a tough thing to avoid with android and a BSD out there powering most of the phones on the planet.
I hate what rh have done to enterprise Linux, but you need to keep clear what they’re selling and what they’re buying.
They provide support licenses for enterprise Linux but dont make money off Linux directly. They also foot a LOT of development on projects and apps that aren’t systemd and are thus not a cancer on Linux. Please explore more with an open mind.
This is exactly the post I was trying to find today as I wondered the same thing about Red Hat and IBM having leverage over these projects.
I don’t know to what extent that happens, but any FOSS project being used to benefit a profit driven company (the software engineering giant IBM in this case) is a big red flag for me.
Most of the fundamental packages in your Linux distribution are primarily written by Red Hat. Do you use Glibc, GCC, gnu utils, systemd, GNOME, podman, pipewire, Wayland, Xorg, or Flatpak for starters?
Red Hat is hardly a free rider in the open source world.
It is also worth noting that Red Hat created the Fedora Project. They created it so they could have RHEL (corporate) and Fedora (community) instead of just Red Hat Linux which they had before.
It always makes me laugh when people worry about Red Hat “taking Fedora corporate”. Fedora was created explicitly to be the community offering and is a key part of the Red Hat strategy. I guess not everybody knows their Linux history.
Many of the Fedora leaders and maintainers are Red Hat employees.
As for US influence, that has always been a thing. US law dominates the thinking. What you really need to worry about is the Linux Foundation.
So moving to a BSD then? Linux is mostly packages written by big tech. People have to eat.
BSD isn’t what I’d call a communal focused project anyways with its licensing, as much as I love the BSDs
That’s a tough thing to avoid with android and a BSD out there powering most of the phones on the planet.
I hate what rh have done to enterprise Linux, but you need to keep clear what they’re selling and what they’re buying.
They provide support licenses for enterprise Linux but dont make money off Linux directly. They also foot a LOT of development on projects and apps that aren’t systemd and are thus not a cancer on Linux. Please explore more with an open mind.