This is not a "sensitive" issue, unless you consider GP's opinion "sensitive". I don't. I also don't think it would lead to a curious, constructive conversation. There is probably nothing OP could offer which would change what the experience of 8 years in RH engineering showed me. At best, it would lead to another long reply where I tried to explain what RH was actually like versus GP's impression.

It's essentially GP posting on the Debian/OpenBSD/LK ML and saying "wow, these guys are arrogant". Well, they have strong opinions, and they need to justify them. If you don't have thick skin, you should probably avoid upstream discussions. It doesn't mean you should cast aspersions on the developers or their communities/companies. Linus is an incredibly nice person, but you wouldn't think it if all you saw was his mails blasting Intel for Spectre/Meltdown. You'd have a very different opinion of the man than who he is in 99% of interactions, and commenting about it on HN would be likely to get a reply similar to mine.

GP only had "anecdotal" experience with Red Hat versus actually working inside the company. When I started, I was worried that it would be different "behind the curtain". It was not. The other who mentioned junior engineers speaking up if they disagreed was spot on.

In 201x (2015? 2017? I dunno), RH changed their pay structure from being bimonthly to biweekly in the US to align with the rest of the world. There were hundreds of replies to the entire company debating whether it was better to pay us once a month and manage your money better, or once a week to be more consistent, or...

That's what the company was. It was not by the time I left. Granted, when I started, RH HQ was still on a college campus. If all you ever read was upstream mailing lists, you'd get the feeling that everyone (Linux, Theo [not that he works for RH, obviously], Lennart, whomever) other than Dan Walsh was arrogant assholes. That's not representative of who they actually are.

Painting Red Hat with a broad brush from incidental interactions versus the perspective of someone who spent nearly a decade there is dramatically different. Did it have problems? Sure. But none of the ones GP mentioned. The world is much bigger than what GP imagined from his anecdotal experience.

RH was a unicorn, and it's gone. LinkedIn last summer was essentially rats fleeing a sinking ship. IBM spent $35B on a company with no actual assets (a few patents) other than smart, passionate people. They would have had to really try to screw it up. And they did. I don't honestly know if there will be another RH in the future, but I'm hoping there will be.