(disclaimer: I work at Red Hat, not on any OS/distro) This is a nitpick, but Red Hat did not get bought by IBM. What happened was IBM announcing the intention

(disclaimer: I work at Red Hat, not on any OS/distro) This is a nitpick, but Red Hat did not get bought by IBM. What happened was IBM announcing the intention to buy Red Hat. It's maybe a subtle, but possibly important distinction. Red Hat is still its own independent entity until the deal goes through (which means IIRC passing the board's approval, SEC and likely other stuff). This is expected to happen in late 2019 I believe, but it might still fall through. This doesn't absolutely dispel any possibility of IBM's influence, but it should be very low/zero until the merger actually goes through. But I also don't know how all this works.