I think it largely was Canonical that was the issue. Every time they've pushed something that they designed/developed it always seemed to me that they were more attempting to solve their business model problem rather than a Linux architectural problem. (i.e. get people dependent on them rather than just providing a solution)
Even though Red Hat is a much larger organization, their contributions have never felt like power plays in the same way that Canonical's have. Perhaps it's just the way that Canonical tries to shove their stuff through while Red Hat seems to get more organic buy-in. For example, as controversial as Systemd was (mainly from sys admins and power users), it did have a level buy-in from distro maintainers and developers which Upstart never really did. Canonical just tried to say 'we're doing this.'
Sure, many things have been contentious... changes in general meet with resistance. That's not a uniquely Red Hat, or even Canonical, thing. But in the end, and this is just my impression as I'm no longer a major user of either company's distro, Red Hat seems more interested in working with (with the notable exception of one specific prolific individual) other developers and distros while Canonical doesn't. It shows in the results: most of Canonical's major initiatives don't even survive in their own distro for too long either because of user revolt or the other distros go in a different direction. (they lost me as a user because of a couple of them)
(If there are distro maintainers / package developers who disagree, I'd be interested to hear about it. Again, this is just my impression)
Even though Red Hat is a much larger organization, their contributions have never felt like power plays in the same way that Canonical's have. Perhaps it's just the way that Canonical tries to shove their stuff through while Red Hat seems to get more organic buy-in. For example, as controversial as Systemd was (mainly from sys admins and power users), it did have a level buy-in from distro maintainers and developers which Upstart never really did. Canonical just tried to say 'we're doing this.'