Ten years ago, Red Hat changed its business model, ending its Red Hat Linux product and launching the Fedora Core community Linux distribution in its stead.
The Fedora Project was officially born Sept. 22, 2003, and Red Hat Linux officially drew its last breath in 2004 as a supported offering. Fedora has been the only free non-enterprise Linux release from Red Hat ever since. From a commercial standpoint, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is Red Hat’s flagship platform and in many respects, its continued success today is due in part to the success of Fedora over the last 10 years. Many features that land in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux release are first proven by community use in Fedora.
In a video interview with eWEEK, Fedora Project Leader Robyn Bergeron reflects on 10 years of Fedora and discusses what the future might hold.
Bergeron noted that Fedora has shaped the lives of those that have participated in the project’s development. She also commented that over the last 10 years, acceptance of open source has also grown to now become the standard model for technology development.
At the beginning of the Fedora Project’s life, Red Hat’s involvement with Fedora was somewhat different than it is today. In the beginning the project was all about Red Hat. Today, Red Hat is the lead sponsor for Fedora, though the project is a community-led initiative with wide participation.
The Next 10 Years
Looking to the future, Bergeron wants to see continued improvement and evolution in Fedora.
While the project is always looking for increased participation, there is also a need for improved automation to enable developers to focus on value-added activities.
“We need to think about how we’re actually making the sausage,” Bergeron said. “I think we can try and abstract and automate the things we have to do a lot, so our really awesome people’s brains can be applied to solving problems that aren’t yet automate-able.”
Watch the full video with Fedora Project Leader, Robyn Bergeron below:
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.