First, it develops almost everything out in the open. That includes developers communicating with their coworkers through public mailing lists for those projects. Sometimes those are hosted by Redhat but most often they are hosed by other projects governance (free desktop, kernel, openjdk). When it comes to those projects employees end up communicating on the list instead of internal or in person to make sure everybody has access to the communication. Most OSS ran by companies loved here on HN (Google, Fb, etc) has development happen on internal lists with occasional code dumps.
Second, for almost all projects started by Redhat employees do not require copy right assignment. Yes, I know Fedora has something for their project but that seams to be an exception. No copyright assignment on systemd or many gnome sub-projects they started. Compare that again to OSS from Google, FB and even Ubuntu (upstart requires copy right assignment).
Third, and contrary to what you just said... YES YOU CAN FORK IT. It happens all the time. People build one person distros all the time (or obscure distros with a small group of volunteers). Hell, somebody even forked systemd (new project: useslessd) to remove things he considers bad.
So, in conclusion, what you call a compelling case is nothing more then argument on thin ice... at least in my eyes given the evidence. Technically they can exert control over the projects if they employ the maintainer. But, given the facts they not setup in a position to exploit it and given the current status quo we should see it coming.
I'm not affiliated with Redhat; I don't run Redhat; I know some people who work / worked at Redhat in past.
First, it develops almost everything out in the open. That includes developers communicating with their coworkers through public mailing lists for those projects. Sometimes those are hosted by Redhat but most often they are hosed by other projects governance (free desktop, kernel, openjdk). When it comes to those projects employees end up communicating on the list instead of internal or in person to make sure everybody has access to the communication. Most OSS ran by companies loved here on HN (Google, Fb, etc) has development happen on internal lists with occasional code dumps.
Second, for almost all projects started by Redhat employees do not require copy right assignment. Yes, I know Fedora has something for their project but that seams to be an exception. No copyright assignment on systemd or many gnome sub-projects they started. Compare that again to OSS from Google, FB and even Ubuntu (upstart requires copy right assignment).
Third, and contrary to what you just said... YES YOU CAN FORK IT. It happens all the time. People build one person distros all the time (or obscure distros with a small group of volunteers). Hell, somebody even forked systemd (new project: useslessd) to remove things he considers bad.
So, in conclusion, what you call a compelling case is nothing more then argument on thin ice... at least in my eyes given the evidence. Technically they can exert control over the projects if they employ the maintainer. But, given the facts they not setup in a position to exploit it and given the current status quo we should see it coming.
I'm not affiliated with Redhat; I don't run Redhat; I know some people who work / worked at Redhat in past.