Mark Ewing used to wear a red Cornell lacrosse cap and when he would help in computer labs people would look for a the man in the red hat. The company was called Red Hat after Mark but their logo has been a person in a fedora for a long time.
Fedora is a community continuation of Red Hat Linux, which was discontinued in favor of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Back when I was starting out Fedora wasn’t a thing, you downloaded Red Hat Linux for free directly from the company or could buy it in a box.