Jared Smith steps down as Fedora project leader [LWN.net]

Jared Smith steps down as Fedora project leader

Posted Feb 8, 2012 14:44 UTC (Wed) by mmcgrath (guest, #44906)
In reply to: Jared Smith steps down as Fedora project leader by kragilkragil2
Parent article: Jared Smith steps down as Fedora project leader

> Why doesn't Red Hat let the community decide? Is Fedora still a community distro if a company decides its leader?

I don't think it's fair to call Fedora a 100% community distro. On the Fedora Project's website it says in several locations that Fedora is sponsored by Red Hat.

I'd say Fedora is a partnership between Red Hat and the community. It works out well for both since Red Hat gets so many talented contributors from the community and the community doesn't have to bare the full cost of creating Fedora.

Even though much of Fedora's leadership is chosen from the community by the community, the actual "Leader" position is not.

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Jared Smith steps down as Fedora project leader

Posted Feb 8, 2012 15:09 UTC (Wed) by rfontana (subscriber, #52677) [Link] (2 responses)

I don't think the statement "sponsored by Red Hat" itself is in conflict with characterizing Fedora as a "community" distro. To argue otherwise is to apply a double standard to Fedora, since it is undeniable that plenty of projects that we unhesitatingly apply the "community" label to have "sponsors" or some more or less euphemistic equivalent term applied to corporations investing significant resources in the project. It may be that with Fedora what is relevant is the absence of other sponsors of significance, and the degree of resources provided by Red Hat.

Jared Smith steps down as Fedora project leader

Posted Feb 11, 2012 13:59 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link] (1 responses)

Hmmm. To bikeshed a bit about the term sponsor - I admittedly wouldn't be able to come up with a better word but feel that this one is wrong. Maybe it's my lack of English language skills but it seems to me a sponsor should SPONSOR what is going on, not dictate it. I see SUSE as a community member of the openSUSE community - and although the roles are slightly different due to Fedora being a rather different community, I think Red Hat has a roughly similar position in Fedora.

In any case, using the term 'sponsor' or not, Fedora is a community. Not a community-led distro like Debian, Gentoo or openSUSE, but neither is it a closed development thing like RHEL and SLE are. So THAT word, community distribution - fine.

Jared Smith steps down as Fedora project leader

Posted Feb 12, 2012 4:00 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

"Fedora is a community. Not a community-led distro like Debian, Gentoo or openSUSE"

Hold on. How is openSUSE community led while Fedora is not?