Debian vs. Red Hat in terms of contribution to FOSS
 

Let me begin by stating outright that this thread has nothing to do with performance or which package manager works better or has better repositories. This is a thread comparing the contributions of arguably the two largest or most significant Linux distros of all time. It is not intended to be a flame war, merely a discussion of what each distribution has(and continues to) contribute to the world of FOSS. So who has done more for the world of free and open source software, Debian or Red Hat(Fedora included)?

Kind of a loaded question. And even though you are not trying to start a flame war it's probably gonna happen lol..

It's kind of like asking who is contributing more to the auto industry, Toyota or Honda?


I don't think you will be able to get any kind of legitimate answer but I will throw my two cents in.


RedHat has and continues to be one of the best FOSS solutions for production servers and specific applications(JBoss for isntance). Oracle Enterprise Linux is a good example, although its not truly FOSS as it has commercial licensing there are free versions.


Debian distrobutions have made arguably the most significant contribution by taking huge strides in getting the Linux desktop environment into the mainstream consumers hands. Things like WINE and all these new versions of GUI's coming out are driven by this which is absolutely awesome. There was a significant amount of time where Linux was making huge advancements on the server side of things but was a bit lack-luster on the destkop side