Red Hat Keeps Grip on Fedora

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Red Hat announced on April 4 that the Fedora Project is going to stay under Red Hats control, instead of going to the Fedora Foundation as it had previously announced.

Red Hats Community Development Manager Greg DeKoenigsberg explained that the Fedora Foundation was not going to take charge of the operating system, after all.

Instead, Red Hat was retaining some “control over Fedora decisions, because Red Hats business model depends upon Fedora.”

/zimages/6/28571.gifClick here to read an eWEEK Labs review of Red Hats Fedora Core 5.

This brings to mind the way Sun keeps control of Java through its Java Community Process partners.

This is also not what Red Hat said it was doing in June 2005, when it announced that it was forming the Foundation to take charge of Fedora development.

At that time, Mark Webbink, Red Hats deputy general counsel, said, “We feel that we are now at a point where we need to give up absolute control. We built our company on the competence of the open-source community and its time for us to continue to manifest that.”

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/zimages/6/28571.gifeWEEK Labs Senior Analyst Jason Brooks gives high marks to the new Fedora Core 5. Click here to download his podcast.

By August, Red Hats Foundation plans were a little clearer.

The new organization was to provide funding for filing patents covering inventions of open-source developers; to support copyright assignments to assure compliance with open-source licenses; and to provide organizational structure for Fedora volunteers.

So, what happened?

/zimages/6/28571.gifRead the full story on Linux-Watch: Fedoras Red Hat Future

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