The Fedora Foundation was intended to take control of the Fedora Linux distribution

R E L A T E D C O N T E N T

Red Hat axes Fedora Foundation

Open source vendor decides to hold on to distro's ownership

Tom Sanders at Linuxworld in Boston, vnunet.com 07 Apr 2006

Red Hat has abandoned plans to create an independent Fedora Foundation.

The project was intended to take over control of the Fedora Linux distribution, which is essentially a developer preview version of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution. The software is governed by the General Public Licence.

Red Hat went back on its previous decision because it could not articulate what the Foundation could accomplish that the company could not, Fedora project leader Max Spevack explained in an email to a Fedora mailing list.

"We found, in every single case, that the Fedora Foundation was not the right answer," he wrote.

The company unveiled the initiative at the Red Hat summit in New Orleans in June last year.

Red Hat said that it was unable to give up total control over the application because it relies on the project for future versions of its flagship Red Hat Enterprise Linux product.

"Red Hat contributes millions of dollars in staff and resources to the success of Fedora, and Red Hat also accepts all of the legal risk for Fedora. Therefore, Red Hat will sometimes need to make tough decisions about Fedora," Spevack wrote.

Together with the Foundation, Red Hat at the time also launched a patent commons project that would bundle patents to fend off attacks against open source.

But in the meantime that role has been largely taken over by the Open Invention Network, Spevack said.

He also argued that a big company such as Red Hat would be in a better position than a small foundation to defend open source if it were attacked.

Red Hat has instead expanded Fedora's board to include four community members in addition to five Red Hat employees. The company also appoints the board's chairman, who has power of veto.

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