Red Hat releases Fedora to Fedora Foundation

Red Hat releases Fedora to Fedora Foundation

Linux major Red Hat has decided to hand over the Fedora project completely to the Fedora Foundation. With this decision, they would be turning over copyrights and development work related to the Fedora Linux Operating System to this Open Source foundation. Fedora project was started in 2002 when the company decided to split their product range into two identities, commercially supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and the free version in Fedora.

Apparently, Red Hat is finding it hard to meet its goals of supporting the Fedora project, as they have been unable to generate the kind of excitement and outside developer’s interests. The company now plans to help Fedora Foundation grow and develop on its own outside the controls of the Red Hat as a commercial corporation.

The foundation is due to launch the latest version Fedora Core 4 on Monday. It would be bringing broader processor support, the Xen software for running multiple operating systems on one computer, version 4 of the GCC compiler, and other features to this popular distribution of the Linux Operating System.

Fedora is important for the company as it helps to get access to features and upgrades for their commercial offering in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Moreover, it also showcases the commitment of the company towards the Open Source Community of which Linux is a big part.

Red Hat’s deputy general counsel, Mark Webbink had this to say about these latest developments: “We need to move away from a system of software patents compromised by trivial, incremental enhancements that block innovation to a system that is aimed at rewarding substantial innovation. Patents are not equal to innovation. More often, innovation occurs despite patents.”