RedHat is the employer of many Linux developers, including maintainers for GNU software etc., with SuSE and Canonical distant followers (at least it used to be like that).
So I guess that makes them both a very significant contributor as well as deserved receiver of financial resources towards F/OSS. OTOH, apart from adaptions to ever-changing hardware, you could say that the times where Linux innovations are actually serving end users is long, long behind us, and anything RH pushed, such as systemd, gnome, and in particular podman (to take away from Docker ie what RH sees as their market, and theirs alone) etc. is basically zero sum software created out of a self-serving interest of selling support contracts by definition. That Linux isn't pro consumer is also evident by it being used for clouds and for a privacy-invading mobile O/S.
Linux was nice and gave a direction to a developer community as long as it was chasing commercial Unix/POSIX with strong precedents and blueprints what to implement. Now it's just an IBM division.
People that weren't there in the begining don't get it that Linux only really took off around the UNIX offerings of the early 2000's, when Oracle, Compaq, Intel, IBM money started be pumped into Linux in some form.
The thing with UNIX/POSIX clones, is that there is hardly any inovation beyond adding new drivers and kernel features, as POSIX doesn't have anything else to offer.
So I guess that makes them both a very significant contributor as well as deserved receiver of financial resources towards F/OSS. OTOH, apart from adaptions to ever-changing hardware, you could say that the times where Linux innovations are actually serving end users is long, long behind us, and anything RH pushed, such as systemd, gnome, and in particular podman (to take away from Docker ie what RH sees as their market, and theirs alone) etc. is basically zero sum software created out of a self-serving interest of selling support contracts by definition. That Linux isn't pro consumer is also evident by it being used for clouds and for a privacy-invading mobile O/S.
Linux was nice and gave a direction to a developer community as long as it was chasing commercial Unix/POSIX with strong precedents and blueprints what to implement. Now it's just an IBM division.