I am learning about community-based Linux distros as they are my preferred choice compared to corporate ones. And when I get to Fedora, what I see from the fence is a sofisticated, well-supported OS.
However, seeing that it is sponsored by the Red Hat corporation, the question arises: could Red Hat eventually take control of the project? I suppose the answer comes down to how much weight Red Hat actually has on the development of said distro. From what I know, it has employees dedicated full-time to it.
Let’s rephrase the question and say that the Fedora project ditched Red Hat from its development due to some irrepairable decision; how viable would the continuation of the OS development be as compared to, for example, Debian, which is also community-based but, as far as I know, has no such backing from a corporation?
Please, note that, while I am indeed a Debian user, I am not trying in any way to shit on Fedora. I myself am curious to try it out as I have recently arrived to Linux.
Yes, and they could eventually take control of debian too.
Why bother mitigating such far-fetched risks though?
The mitigation cost is similar to the remediation one (ie. you’ll just have to switch distro either way), and it’s also likely to go down as the risk increases (ie. people will fork off fedora far sooner than the risk of it actually doing whatever bad things you fear Red Hat is gonna do to it becomes a practical concern).
BTW: are you aware the Linux Foundation is an US entity and funded by (among others) most US IT megacorps? (interestingly, amazon/aws is only a silver member - Bezos must really be a cheapskate)
How could they take control of Debian?
I just meant that anything can happen eventually - debian wasn’t the happiest example
The Linux Foundation is not Linux. It is a nonprofit organisation that supports linux and encourages open standards.
It does not own nor control Linux; no single entity does.