how community oriented will RH let Fedora be?

Posted Sep 23, 2003 21:06 UTC (Tue) by snitm (guest, #4031)
Parent article: Red Hat Linux becomes Fedora

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?

how community oriented will RH let Fedora be?

Posted Sep 23, 2003 21:48 UTC (Tue) by andrel (guest, #5166) [Link] (1 responses)

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?

Posted Sep 24, 2003 11:56 UTC (Wed) by mdekkers (guest, #85) [Link]

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.