Software Engineer. FOSS Enthusiast. Book worm.
Of course they need the software and that’s why they contribute to make it better. That’s how most of the FOSS development works anyway. People have an ‘itch’ to fix the issues or add a feature and they do it and the license makes sure that others benefit from that itch.
Apart from RHEL, RedHat contributes to hundreds of FOSS projects and hires a lot of FOSS devs. So their contribution in progressing the desktop linux is huge. You can see the contributions to the various project here: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/open-source-program-office/contributions
Believe it or not corporates play a big role in making Linux what it is and their enshittification is bad for Linux ecosystem.
Sad that RedHat went this way.
The conflict was triggered when the state High Court gave a verdict in favour of the Meiti community for a long standing demand for special previliges.
The Wikipedia article about the violence has a good overview.