LWN: Comments on "Red Hat Linux becomes Fedora"

Red Hat Linux becomes Fedora

marcosII — 2003-11-11T18:33:46+00:00

Win, win for redhat. They are on project, they decide where it goes, they get first pick and all, for that matter, on whatever technology comes from this. Yet another way to make more money. Though nothing is wrong with that, they do it at the expense of whoever buys in to it, thinking they are getting something as stable as built from source(NO WAY JOSE). Here, they offer to sell you something the community has worked for, which is even worse than what Microsoft is doing.

Feel free to correct me.
Marco

Red Hat Linux becomes Fedora

dylanparry — 2003-10-22T19:48:38+00:00

Quote from the link in the announcement: "Our new up2date, for example, supports YUM and apt-get repositories"

Red Hat Linux becomes Fedora

macemoneta — 2003-09-24T14:07:35+00:00

...and yum, both supported by FreshRPMs. I wonder how all the infrastructure pieces are going to fit together after this reshuffling?

Red Hat Linux becomes Fedora

ttrafford — 2003-09-24T13:51:41+00:00

Hmm, apt is noticeably missing...

how community oriented will RH let Fedora be?

mdekkers — 2003-09-24T11:56:27+00:00

While I don't disagree with the overall gist of your statement, I do disagree with your assertion that somehow the Debian project will help keep *any* enterprise linux player honest.

To put it bluntly but succintly, unless someone coughs up the dough to certify Debian for Oracle, neither RedHat, nor SuSE, nor any of the other commercial players are going to care very much about Debian. debian is not and will not feature on their radar anytime soon. Now if someone were to stand up and use Debian as a base of their enterprise level product while keeping within the spirit of Debian, yes, then it would be a threat.

As it stands, the target market for RH, SuSE et al are simply oblivious to Debina, and when they do know (i.e. they have employed a clever admin or somesuch) they generally still don't care.

Red Hat Linux becomes Fedora

mdekkers — 2003-09-24T11:50:34+00:00

heh /me slaps himself with a large trout for not following the link :-) - guess I was too much in a hurry to show what a smartass I can be....

Red Hat Linux becomes Fedora

fLameDogg — 2003-09-24T02:18:57+00:00

Well, it's a good thing for me these comments are here. I hadn't followed the link, and if I hadn't come back and read these comments I might have gone right on thinking that RH had been overtaken by the Buzzword Bandits.

That'll teach me not to follow every link on the Web =OP.

Red Hat Linux becomes Fedora

proski — 2003-09-24T01:02:57+00:00

As I understand it, making money from up2date didn't work. Now Red Hat will make money primarily from the enterprise editions of their products. The free distribution, on the other hand, will be more open and community oriented. That can introduce some instability, but it's probably the desired effect.

It's mostly a win-win situation. Users get timely updates for more than one system without need to resort to KRUD, freshrpms or manual download. Red Hat stays in a good shape financially. Red Hat Linux remains popular.

how community oriented will RH let Fedora be?

andrel — 2003-09-23T21:48:07+00:00

I think Fedora will be fairly community oriented. But if it isn't, who cares? Since Fedora will be free software anybody who disagrees with Redhat's direction can fork. Remember how Mandrake got started? Also the existence of community-run projects like Debian will help keep RH honest.

how community oriented will RH let Fedora be?

snitm — 2003-09-23T21:06:10+00:00

To illustrate my concern I'll step through an example; In reading the Fedora Project webpage (FAQ, etc) I found some fairly contradictory things.

My major source of concern is the fact that the Fedora Project is exclussively governed by a Red Hat-only Steering Committee. This coupled with the fact that the main page of Fedora says: "The project will produce time-based releases of Fedora Core about 2-3 times a year with a public release schedule." YET they later say (as taken from the FAQ, adding new architecture support question): "Red Hat may also choose to build Fedora Core for other architectures, ..."

So which is it? A trully community oriented project, developed by a community OR a Red Hat controlled substance that is doled out to the drones of the Fedora Project?

I think amd64 support will be a good litmus test of just how controlling RH is going to be with what RedHat tech is and isn't allowed into the Fedora Project; consumer demand for amd64 will likely intensify in the near future given AMD's recent announcement of amd64 FX chips.

Will the Red Hat governed Fedora Steering Committee allow robust amd64 support into Fedora even if it undermines Red Hat's RHEL efforts? Or will the proliferation of Red Hat backed amd64 support into Fedora be deliberately delayed?

Red Hat Linux becomes Fedora

xorbe — 2003-09-23T20:33:46+00:00

It's not obvious unless one follows the link though.

Red Hat Linux becomes Fedora

hp — 2003-09-23T20:31:26+00:00

Someone didn't get the joke. ;-)

Red Hat Linux becomes Fedora

mdekkers — 2003-09-23T20:13:35+00:00

"Red Hat and Fedora Linux are pleased to announce an alignment of their mutually complementary core proficiencies leveraging them synergistically in the creation of the Fedora Project, a paradigm shift for Linux technology development and rolling early deployment models."

Buzzword Overflow Error.
Exit.

It's true! RedHat has been invaded by mindless PR media drones that take their cues directly from the Dilbert "manuals".