"Last June, Red Hat announced its intention to launch the Fedora Foundation. We've had a lot of smart people working hard to make this Foundation happen, but in the end, it just didn't help to accomplish our goals for Fedora. Instead, we are restructuring Fedora Project, with dramatically increased leadership from within the Fedora community. The next obvious question - 'Why no Foundation?' - deserves a detailed explanation."
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Member since:
2005-11-15
It's Red Hat's baby. I don't know why the expected developers and community heads to flock to Fedora when Red Hat intended to exert ultimate control over the distribution. It's a commercial distribution, in the end, mostly intended to try out software in front of a global audience for potential inclusion into Red Hat Enterprise.
On the other hand, I think they're doing a reasonably good job with Fedora, and it's a decent distribution. Not my favourite of the bunch, to be sure, but I don't claim to be their target audience.
I'm pleased that the Fedora folks decided to state their case as openly as they could. If anyone objects to what they have to say or the purpose of the distribution, it isn't like they were being led on by Red Hat, especially after this statement.
Hrm. That's only semi-legible after two pots of coffee, think it's time to head home.
Member since:
2005-10-11
Member since:
2005-06-29
Red Hats Max Spevack,
"we've reconstituted the Fedora Project Board to include community leaders directly. Initially, there are nine board members: five Red Hat members and four Fedora community members. This Board is responsible for making all of the operational decisions of the greater Fedora project, including decisions about budget and strategic direction. In addition to the nine board members, there will also be a chairman appointed by Red Hat, who has veto power over any decision."
The way I read this Red Hat has majority vote in decision making and a controlling vote when using veto power. They are also selecting the board members that will represent the Fedora community.This has the look of a power move by Red Hat and I'll be really surprised if the Fedora community accepts this.
Member since:2005-07-07
Member since:2006-01-18
Member since:2005-06-29
Look at it this way, there is no way the community vote can win which means they have just lost influence on the direction of their project.The future foundation along with the implied sence of autonomy has been shelfed. This independence is spoken about in this document. I am not saying Red Hat has bad intentions only that the way the voting is set up is a joke.
Member since:
2005-12-14
My 2 cents (copying from a blog post I just made):
At first I was surprised that Red Hat finds it necessary to reserve ultimate control (veto power) over the Fedora project
Veto power? The OpenSolaris Charter certainly does not grant Sun veto power. But then as I read the message more carefully and thought about it, something hit me like a bolt.
First, some background: It's important to understand what exactly OpenSolaris is (and isn't). Unlike Fedora, OpenSolaris is purely a co-development project built around a code base. In other words, we do not conflate the OpenSolaris project/code with any of the distros derived from it. By contrast, Fedora is all three conflated into one: a) the Fedora co-development process b.) the Fedora code-base and c.) the Fedora distro.
How does this relate to community self-governance?
With OpenSolaris, one set of policies and procedures (the recently ratified OpenSolaris Charter) applies specifically to the co-development project and code-base. This charter is community-driven. A separate set of policies and procedures applies to Solaris Express -- Sun's bi-weekly OpenSolaris based distro. This distro is Sun-driven and of course nobody objects to Sun controlling it because anyone can create their own OpenSolaris-based distro. (And as everybody knows, SchilliX, BeleniX, and Nexenta, have done exactly that.)
Maybe RedHat should adopt this concept? It certainly stands to reason that the Fedora community developers would like it better..
Eric
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/eric_boutilier
Member since:2006-01-18
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-12-14
Spike wrote:
> so what do they have to gain from such an
> arrangement besides positive PR?
Volume.
The theory being that for companies like Sun, Red Hat, MySQL, etc., this kind of arrangement leads to a bigger and more enthusiastic community, which leads to greater volume for their development distros (e.g. Fedora, Solaris Express) and community distros (e.g. CentOS, BeleniX) and therefore more volume for their regular product based on those distros (Solaris, RHEL).
Eric
Member since:
2005-08-13
Everything in the email seemed reasonable. While I relize that Red Hat would have veto power, as the first post said, it is Red Hat's baby. I just started using Fedora after 4 years of using Debian and Debian based distros(Ubuntu) and I have been very impressed with it. It seems like the current situation is working fine. Why change what isn't broke?
Member since:
2006-01-28
I doubt this will have any ramifications on the Fedora development community, I think most doesn't really care that much. There are many problems with developing and evolving Fedora (or any other distribution for that matter) but none of these problems had 'Fedora Foundation' as the answer. The Fedora Foundation was always a nice token gesture thing, but I doubt anyone ever thought it would actually have a real influence on the day to day business of creating Fedora just like a potential Ubuntu Foundation will not really matter that much in the end for Ubuntu.
