It should be obvious to anyone that RedHat has a vested interest in making the vast majority of Linux distributions dependent on technology it controls. Linux is its bread-and-butter.
It appears RedHat has realised that, through systemd, it can readily provide preferential support for its own projects, and place roadblocks up for projects it does not control, thus extending its influence broadly and quickly. By using tenuous dependencies amongst its own projects it can speed adoption even faster.
Once it has significant influence, and the maintainers of competing projects have drifted away either out of frustration or because they are starved of oxygen, RedHat knows that they can effectively take Linux closed-source by restricting access to documentation and fighting changes that are not in their own best interests.
At this point, they can market themselves as the only rational choice for corporate Linux support -- and this would be perfectly reasonable because they would have effective control of the ecosystem.
Linux (as in a full OS implementation) is an extremely complex beast and you can't just "fork it" and start your own 'distro' from scratch anymore -- you would have to leverage a small army to do it, then keep that army to maintain it. It's just not practical.
At the same time, Linux has matured to the point of attaining some measure of corporate credibility, and from RedHat's point of view, it no longer needs its 'open source' roots to remain viable. RedHat also, understandably, fears potential competition.
Through systemd and subsequent takeovers of other ecosystem components, RedHat can leverage its own position while stifling potential competition -- this is a best-case scenario for any corporation. It will have an advantage in the marketplace, potential customers will recognise that advantage, and buy its products and support contracts.
I hope you can understand why many see this as an extremely compelling case. Arguing that RedHat has 'ethics' and would 'never do such a thing' is immature and silly -- RedHat is a corporation, it exists to profit from its opportunities, just like any other company. To attempt to argue that it would not do so is contrary to what we can assume is its default state.
It's no 'conspiracy theory' to assume that a corporation will behave like a corporation; arguing that it is just makes one look like a naive child. systemd is one large step toward RedHat gaining the ability to reap what it has sewn -- for its benefit and not necessarily ours.
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.
"At this point, they can market themselves as the only rational choice for corporate Linux support..."
I'm not sure how relevant this is to Debian.
Its current, official support window of "through 1 year after the release of the next version" (with an additional LTS experiment for squeeze at the moment) is just too short for corporations running Linux in production, especially if you get started anywhere near the release of the next version. E.g. right now I'm helping a non-profit corporation upgrade from squeeze to wheezy, and the prospect of doing that again in less than two years means it probably won't be moving to jessie.
How many orgs out there are really happy with Debian's short support windows?
It appears RedHat has realised that, through systemd, it can readily provide preferential support for its own projects, and place roadblocks up for projects it does not control, thus extending its influence broadly and quickly. By using tenuous dependencies amongst its own projects it can speed adoption even faster.
Once it has significant influence, and the maintainers of competing projects have drifted away either out of frustration or because they are starved of oxygen, RedHat knows that they can effectively take Linux closed-source by restricting access to documentation and fighting changes that are not in their own best interests.
At this point, they can market themselves as the only rational choice for corporate Linux support -- and this would be perfectly reasonable because they would have effective control of the ecosystem.
Linux (as in a full OS implementation) is an extremely complex beast and you can't just "fork it" and start your own 'distro' from scratch anymore -- you would have to leverage a small army to do it, then keep that army to maintain it. It's just not practical.
At the same time, Linux has matured to the point of attaining some measure of corporate credibility, and from RedHat's point of view, it no longer needs its 'open source' roots to remain viable. RedHat also, understandably, fears potential competition.
Through systemd and subsequent takeovers of other ecosystem components, RedHat can leverage its own position while stifling potential competition -- this is a best-case scenario for any corporation. It will have an advantage in the marketplace, potential customers will recognise that advantage, and buy its products and support contracts.
I hope you can understand why many see this as an extremely compelling case. Arguing that RedHat has 'ethics' and would 'never do such a thing' is immature and silly -- RedHat is a corporation, it exists to profit from its opportunities, just like any other company. To attempt to argue that it would not do so is contrary to what we can assume is its default state.
It's no 'conspiracy theory' to assume that a corporation will behave like a corporation; arguing that it is just makes one look like a naive child. systemd is one large step toward RedHat gaining the ability to reap what it has sewn -- for its benefit and not necessarily ours.