Red Hat Spins Fedora Out...

[Vin DSL]

Number one Linux distributor Red Hat (Quote, Chart) wrapped up its user conference in New Orleans this week by "freeing" its Fedora community Linux project and calling for the creation of a software patents commons...

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news...le.php/3510141

[Spathiphyllum]

Red Hat created the Fedora Project in 2003 after it discontinued its Red Hat Linux product line. The move freed the company to focus its efforts on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, its flagship product.

Fedora is intended to be a hobbyist Linux distribution with a faster release cycle and a more bleeding edge feel to open source technologies.

Since its inception, Fedora has served as a testing ground for new technologies (like SELinux) that eventually make their way into Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I think this says it all... Fedora will become the gateway drug to the more substantive Enterprise edition. Recruit more development from the cast of thousands innovating, filter the best projects and adopt them, tap a hopefully growing resource of developers while "giving" them the platform duty-free, and hope to expand their sphere of influence in the *nix world. Seems like a reasonable decision though I know nothing of Fedora itself. I hadn't even realized Red Hat had been "discontinued" though I've tried several distributions based on the Red Hat core.

So I wonder when Linux will really take off? It seems to be perpetually on the edge without some singular event forcing it into the mainstream. It feels like it's growing in influence though the profitability model of its existence is still questionable. Perhaps Red Hat's new tweak will be the best balance of open sourcing and commercial endeavor.

[Vin DSL]

I don't know if you noticed these, but it's even more telling, IMHO:

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news...le.php/3456361

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news...le.php/3509281