Fedora Project

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
The Fedora Project logo

The Fedora Project is a project sponsored by Red Hat to co-ordinate the development of the Fedora operating system. Founded on September 2003 as a result of a merger between the Red Hat Linux (RHL) and old Fedora Linux projects. The project consists of Red Hat employees, but in theory operates independently.

When Red Hat Linux split Red Hat Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and the Fedora project, it left the existing small business and home users with some uncertainty about what to do. Red Hat Professional Workstation was created at this same time with the intention of filling the niche that RHL had once filled but it was created without a certain future.[1] This option quickly fell to the wayside for non-enterprise RHL users in favor of the Fedora Project. Recently the Fedora community has been thriving, and the Fedora distribution has a reputation as being a fully-open distribution that focuses on innovation and close work with upstream Linux communities.

Contents

[edit] Governance

The project is not a separate legal entity or organization; Red Hat retains liability for its actions.[2] The Fedora Project Board is responsible for the direction of the Fedora Project and comprises five Red Hat appointed members and four community-elected members. Additionally, Red Hat appoints a chairman who has veto power over any board decision.[3] Within Red Hat, this chairman holds the position of "Fedora Project Leader". Red Hat at one point created a separate Fedora Foundation to govern the project,[4] but after consideration of a variety of issues, canceled it in favor of the board model currently in place.[5][6]

The project facilitates online communication amongst its developers and community members through public mailing lists and wiki pages. It also coordinates an annual summit known as the Fedora Users and Developers Conference (commonly called FUDCon). Additional conferences have taken place in Germany, England and India.[7]

[edit] Subprojects & Special interest groups

The Fedora Project consists of a number of smaller subprojects.[8][9] As of December 2008, these subprojects include:

  • Fedora Engineering Steering Committee provides the day to day technical operations of the Fedora Project.
  • Fedora Documentation provides manuals, tutorials and reference materials to accompany Fedora Project releases.
  • Fedora Translation works to translate software, documentation and websites associated with the Fedora Project.
  • Fedora Marketing strives to increase the size of the Fedora Project user and developer communities.
  • Fedora Ambassadors represent the Fedora Project at various events.
  • Fedora Artwork is responsible for creating a pleasing and consistent visual experience in Fedora distributions.
  • Fedora Infrastructure maintains those computer services upon with the Fedora Project depends including mailing lists, the website and wiki, CVS repositories and the Extras build system.
  • Fedora Distribution manages distributing Fedora on physical media.
  • Fedora Websites aims to develop and maintain the Fedora Project formal websites and to coordinate with community websites.
  • Fedora Internationalization focuses on making Fedora work well for many international languages.
  • Fedora News is where news for the Fedora Project are collected, discussed, and disseminated.

In addition to the well-established projects, a number of special interest groups (SIGs) exist with the Fedora Project. The groups have not yet met the criteria necessary for "project" status.[9] As of February 2007, the list of Fedora SIGs included:

  • Fedora Usability aims to increase the intuitiveness and accessibility of the Fedora Package.
  • Fedora Education targets the education sector including teachers and students.
  • Fedora Printing wishes to improve the printing experience on Fedora.
  • Fedora Rendering is exploring ways to create a more pleasant user experience using technologies such as OpenGL and Cairo.
  • Fedora Bug Triage aims to manage workflow around bug reports.
  • Stateless Linux is an "OS-wide initiative to ensure that Fedora computers can be set up as replaceable appliances, with no important local state".
  • Fedora Engineering has a number of SIGs aimed at packaging various type of applications including games, VoIP, Scientific and Technical tools, Music and Media Production software and applications written in languages such as mono, Perl, PHP, and Python.
  • Fedora Astronomy aims to increase support for astronomers and astrophysicists in Fedora.

[edit] References

  1. ^ "linux.com :: Red Hat Professional Workstation:More Expensive,Fewer features". 2004-02-14. http://www.linux.com/articles/34346?theme=print. Retrieved on 2007-12-21. 
  2. ^ "Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack Responds to Slashdot Questions". 2006-08-18. http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/17/177220. Retrieved on 2007-02-12. 
  3. ^ "The Fedora Project Board". http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board. Retrieved on 2007-02-11. 
  4. ^ Peter Galli (2005-06-03). "Red Hat Creates Fedora Foundation". http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1823403,00.asp. Retrieved on 2007-02-06. 
  5. ^ "The Fedora Foundation". http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Foundation. Retrieved on 2007-02-06. 
  6. ^ Max Spevack (2006-04-04). "Fedora Foundation". http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2006-April/msg00016.html. Retrieved on 2007-02-06. 
  7. ^ "FUDCon". http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/. Retrieved on 2007-02-12. 
  8. ^ "Fedora Project Projects". http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Projects. Retrieved on 2007-02-18. 
  9. ^ a b "Defining Projects". http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DefiningProjects. Retrieved on 2007-02-18. 

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Red Hat
Major products
Services
Projects
Fedora Project · Dogtail
Defunct
Important people
Mergers and acquisitions
Related
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_Project"
Personal tools