[TriLUG] Putting to rest the Fedora Controversy

Joseph Tate jtate at dragonstrider.com
Thu Nov 6 19:08:49 EST 2003


Fedora Core 1 was developed by RH.  Fedora Core going forward will 
always be supervised by RH.  RH will continue to snapshot Fedora Core to 
produce its Enterprise Linux versions.  There will merely be more of a 
community involvement in new packages, package releases, etc.  People 
act like Fedora is Red Hat's ex-wife.  It is not.  It's more like it's 
progeny, or spin-off.  Fedora will become what Red Hat Linux was; we'll 
just have newer versions of Mozilla, PHP, etc because the community will 
be driving.  Since Yum/Apt becomes the maintenance method of choice, 
package maintainers (who may not be RH employees) can release new 
versions without waiting for "Core" snapshots (which will happen ever 6 
months or so).  So you can run Mozilla 1.5 without having to compile it 
yourself or pull it from RawHide, or wait for an errata/update.  People 
who change distributions solely because of this change will surely be 
hasty and uninformed (good Microsoft customers for sure).

All of this change is a good thing for Linux on the Desktop.  If it 
changes too fast for your liking on servers, well, pony up for RHEL WS 
(It's still less than Winbloze 2000 Server at $179), or look into the 
fedora legacy project.

The community will shape Fedora in one way or another.  Those who are 
not involved will have no say.  It will be up to all Fedora users to 
make sure that it succeeds.  If you're not submitting bug reports, 
patches, or at the very least documentation you are doing nothing, and 
the community is no better for your (lack of) efforts.  Supporting OSS 
by merely using the software does not further the cause.

There seem to only be a couple of types of people who are complaining 
about this change: those who don't understand that having a community 
supported distribution is a good thing (a lot of these people already 
run Gentoo, Debian or Mandrake for this very reason), and those who 
don't understand that Free Software does not condone freeloading, which 
  benefits no one and is draining on society as a whole.  Free Software 
is not free: it cost a lot of time, energy, sweat and tears to make it 
what it is today.  What have you done lately?  Have you ever used 
bugzilla?  How about CVS?

So, Fedora Core is a call to arms by Red Hat to the freeloaders (though 
they will never admit it).  Support your own distro is what they're 
saying, because doing it for you is not making us any money, and we have 
a responsibility to our share holders to make money.

As for the brand recognition, Fedora will be a Red Hat sponsored 
project.  Check http://fedora.redhat.com 's title.  There will be no 
ambiguity about which company is behind the distribution.  There just 
will be no box set at CompUSA that you can buy (Retail costs too much 
money).  You'll have to download it and burn it yourself (which chances 
are is all most people would have done anyway), or get it from your 
local LUG.  If you cut your teeth on Fedora, you'll already know RHEL, 
and you'll know where to get sever software.

<sarcasm>
Also, if you don't think that RH has thought this all through, I know of 
a guy who's offering business propositions from some third world 
country.  They seem very profitable, and promise to add inches to your 
nether regions as well as increase your chest size.
</sarcasm>

Now, go forth.  Download Fedora.  Be fruitful, and burn multiple copies 
to give to your friends, family and neighbors.  By the sweat of your 
brow and the toil of your hands shall you produce quality software, and 
the world shall be better for it.

Joseph





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