Hi
I could do (and did) that upstream, I could do so (and did) with RHL, before Fedora, I could do so with RHEL.
In comparison to RHL, nothing has changed for me, except that I am building and shipping packages through the FE build system, instead of building them myself. Both situations have/had pros and cons, which approximately balance each other.
So, in the end, nothing much has changed "by Fedora having been introduced".
Fedora Extras enabled by default makes a huge difference. Anaconda will support it in the subsequent releases which again make it very relevant.
Well, the question is: Does it need a foundation?
It is being created because the community wanted assurance that their work will remain open source, defensible and to serve other stated goals.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Foundation