It’s not going to have a direct material effect, but it’s going to affect perception. There are already people cautious about corporate influence on Linux, and a Linux distro getting closed like this is going to be seen negatively. While Fedora and RedHat are separate entities, they’re close enough for one’s perception to rub off on the other.
The misuse of this meme is one of my biggest meme pet peeves. Have people forgotten that in that scene, his vision is clear when he’s not wearing glasses? So the meme should be the other way around.
Considering that you’re planning to use this with family members who aren’t tech savvy, and as you’re essentially new to Linux yourself, I would suggest something like Zorin OS. The familiarity and ease of use should help you get started fairly quickly, even for newbies. There are a lot of other great distros, of course, some of which were mentioned here, but the learning curve for those can be just a bit steeper. As someone who’s essentially the “tech guy” of the family, believe me when I say you don’t want them to keep bugging you about questions or tech help because they “don’t understand” Linux. You want something that you just install and leave be.
Speaking of something that you can just install and leave, this isn’t strictly Linux, but a great OS to use for non-tech savvy family members is Chrome OS. Get Chrome OS Flex, install it on an old laptop, give it to your family members and call it a day. I’ve had success with it for some of my family members who’ve wanted to revive old laptops. It’s a lot more limited than full featured desktop operating systems, of course, but it’s perfectly suitable for the basic stuff. Best of all, it’s so easy to use that you usually wouldn’t even have to play tech support for your family for it.
It does if you want to migrate your favorites and subscriptions.