Do you think it's some giant conspiracy that everyone who works (or worked, in my case) at Red Hat has to go around claiming autonomy while secretly having their puppet strings pulled from IBM?
No. That is why I asked the poster above about structures that provide relative autonomy.
For instance, in this particular case, the proposal by the Red Hat Display Systems Team may well be considered by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee and the Fedora Council which sounds like what I mean by 'relative autonomy'.
However it appears that Red Hat itself does not have any 'corporate body' that is distinct from IBM.
I suppose I disagree that a distinct corporate body is required for autonomy, but I would definitely agree that without such the risk of the autonomy disappearing in the future is ever-present. I think Red Hat has tons of autonomy now, but at some point IBM could start changing that. It's also possible they have, but having worked at Red Hat and knowing many of the people there, I would expect a lot of screaming, whistleblowing, and resigning should such a thing ever happen. Red Hat is a remarkably "speak your mind" culture, and people do even though it sometimes starts shit storms (such as when people call out the CEO for something publicly on the company-wide mailing list).
