We all know how important FOSS has been and continues to be to the overall success of the, ever-growing, vast Linux ecosystem.
There are though some Distributions (aka Distros), which tend to do a better job than others of engaging in community-based software development.
Fedora is considered the best organized and well-run community Linux Distribution. Fedora is the code base upon which Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is derived and sponsored by Red Hat in an ongoing relationship which was established in 2003 for the purpose of creating a business governance to community "arm's length" arrangement between RHEL and Fedora.
That is a good thing, because unfettered FOSS continues to be central to Fedora's success and with the support of Red Hat, fuels the active development of new innovative technology solutions which first find their way into Fedora for rigorous testing and ultimately merge into Red Hat Enterprise Linux for commercial use.
Red Hat ensure that the Fedora community operate and control their own FOSS interests and that all decision making for software research and development is in the Fedora Project's purview.
Unlike Red Hat and SuSE, Canonical Ltd.'s commercial Ubuntu, doesn't have a companion FOSS Distribution over which the community can exercise full autonomy and control. As such, Canonical Ltd. make all decisions regarding design and development of Ubuntu.
By virtue of Red Hat's sponsorship and size, this makes Fedora the ideal community-driven Distro as many new software components find their way into RHEL and become part of Red Hat's 'real-world' software systems' business application set.
When you look at the three commercial Distributions, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SuSE and Ubuntu, note how each governs their FOSS community relations. You'll find that Red Hat has established the best relationship with the FOSS community. Red Hat continue to expand world-wide business sales of over 1 billion dollars (U.S.) year over year, all FOSS community-driven by Fedora.
Read more about Red Hat's relationship to the Fedora Project here.
-- Dietrich
0 comments:
Post a Comment