Red Hat Lays Groundwork for Fedora Foundation

rob writes " Computer Business Review is reporting that Red Hat has announced plans to hand over control of its Fedora community-led Linux development project to the new Fedora Foundation as part of a new three-pronged intellectual property strategy. "

Comments

dupe

[professorhojo]

seems like a dupe: http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/03/ 1712208&tid=110&tid=106

Re:dupe

[pez]

Perhaps I'm being overly naiive and/or simplistic, but isn't the "Mysterious future" feature supposed to eliminate dupes? I saw this one coming half an hour ago... certainly someone reported it as a dupe, no?

Re:dupe

[Anonymous Coward]

but isn't the "Mysterious future" feature supposed to eliminate dupes?

You must be new here :-)

Re:dupe

[pez]

You must be new here :-)

Says the AC to /. user ID #54 :-)

Time for a new /. slogan!

[dark-br]

News for the amnesiac. Stuff that mattered.

Re:What is official RH distro then?

[ColonelKernel]

Fedora, since its inception, was its own distribution. Redhat created Fedora to help mantain a free (as in beer) distribution based on Redhat. The official Redhat distribution will be as it has since the beginning of the Fedora project. The Redhat branded products, such as AS, ES, and WS will be the Redhat official releases. What Redhat in effect is doing is creating a division between Redhat and the Fedora project much like the division between Redhat and SuSE.

Headline should say...

[poopie]

Redhat still trying to figure out how to lure the opensource community back.

I just hope it's not the classic 3 prong strategy

[Weaselmancer]

1) Do something.
2) ???
3) Profit!

Re:What is official RH distro then?

[maynard]

Note that the source rpm packages for all the Redhat Enterprise editions are still publicaly available - as per GPL requirements. While Redhat won't give you free binaries, there are plenty of places that will. If you're looking for Redhat Enterprise 3 or 4, try: Scientific Linux. It's basically just a recompile of all the Redhat packages with some bundled scientific software (which you can easily remove). I've got SL3 deployed on about a hundred and fifty desktop hosts and it's rock solid. --M

Re:Will MPlayer ever be a Fedora Extra package?

[wackysootroom]

Does Debian really ship Mplayer? I thought you had to get it from the Marillat repositories? I thought mplayer was not officially supported by Debian.

Linux and Free Software are not perfect

[Anonymous Coward]

This is coming from a user who has been casually been trying to get into Linux since Red Hat 6.2, and has each time gone back to Windows. I still like it, but there is a ton of shit that bugs me about it:

1) No unification in package management. RPM is flawed (hi dependancy hell), and YUM is only a bandaid on the solution. DEB is great, but only debian based distributions support it. Windows may have multiple companies doing install programs, but at least they're all doing mostly the same thing.
2) The reliance of many people on "source only". Please. I don't want to download ten million different libraries and go through the hastle, however small you may argue it is, to build from source. I want to download this piece of software, install it, and get on with my life.
3) Alt-Tab. I don't care how yuo do it, but I want to be able to alt tab from a full screen graphical program to another graphical screen (not a console).
4) Drivers. There isn't much that can be done about this, but unless you're masachistic, you're basically forced to use an nVidia video card to get accelerated X. I want my piece of shit Intel EXTREME onboard graphics card to run accelerated X too.
5) GTK themes vs. KDE themes. I don't care if you like programing with GTK 2/+ or with QT libraries, but would it kill you to figure out some easy way to make the actual windows look somewhat similar? I have my awesome theme for KDE, I don't want to do some stupid hack that doesn't work 100% or wait for the author to convert the same theme to GNOME to get my graphical programs to display the same. Oh, and on a side note, can you please figure out why KDE's sound system is so terrible. I do not want to wait a few minutes for KDE to let go of the sound system so I can fucking start Neverwinter Nights.
6) man pages. Explain the contents of a man page for a basic command to a casual user. If he is utterly confused, rewrite it. At least group the fuctions into 'most used' and 'never use in a million years'
7) Configuration. It's easy if you know exactly where in the mess of configuration files on your system a certain file is (usually /etc, which is good) and what it's named (HAHAHAHA, good luck). Or if you know exactly where the configuration utilites are on your computer (most likely in a console, and most likely named this really long name in a really obscure directory that you'll never remember when you need to)
8) Cockyness of it's fans. No, I don't have a reason to switch, other than curiosity. Granted, Microsoft zealots are just as bad, and have less well founded opinions, but that doesn't mean free software zealots are right, just a tiny bit less idiodic.
9) Documentation. The really easy to do stuff seems to be well documented and on every single Linux help site. And a UNIX or Linux pro is certainly a good help. But the step between basic end user and power user seems to be vast, and it's only gotten a little smaller over the years (thank god 90% of my hardware is finally being detected these days at least). Something like the Linux Wiki at LinuxQuestions.org, except on a much larger scale and more all-encompasing would be VERY useful. Even if I've been wrong a few above points (and yes, I've used Linux recently) can you people please update your god damned documentation so I don't have to have these misconceptions.

I do consider myself truely free. I owe my alligence to no one, and I've been on both sides of the fence, and made up my mind that XP better suited my needs than Linux did. That doesn't mean that Linux is bad, or Windows XP is perfect either.

Re:Linux and Free Software are not perfect

[Codename_V]

I really gotta step in here, I just can't take this kind of ignorance.

1) No unification in package management. RPM is flawed (hi dependancy hell), and YUM is only a bandaid on the solution. DEB is great, but only debian based distributions support it.

With the availability of so many rpm frontends, how is it that this "rpm dependency hell" myth persists? And how praytell do you figure .deb files are any different than rpms? Listen real closely this time everyone. An .rpm file is basically the exact same thing as a .deb file. Without a front end like apt you'd have the same dependency hell on Debian. You don't like yum, then fine, use urpmi or yast or up2date or apt or whatever other rpm frontend I forgot to mention.

2) The reliance of many people on "source only". Please. I don't want to download ten million different libraries and go through the hastle, however small you may argue it is, to build from source. I want to download this piece of software, install it, and get on with my life.

If other people prefer source packages, how in the world does it follow that you need to use source packages? I've gotten by just fine for years on Red Hat/Fedora without source packages.

3) Alt-Tab. I don't care how yuo do it, but I want to be able to alt tab from a full screen graphical program to another graphical screen (not a console).

So in a nutshell you want Linux to act like Windows? There's nothing preventing you from setting it up to do just that. In fact (and someone correct me if I'm wrong here) this is exactly the behavior that KDE defaults to. And if you want to get even more Windows-like then use a Windows Clone like Xandros or Linspire.

4) Drivers. There isn't much that can be done about this, but unless you're masachistic, you're basically forced to use an nVidia video card to get accelerated X. I want my piece of shit Intel EXTREME onboard graphics card to run accelerated X too.

And I suppose if Intel didn't support your card under Windows then that would be all Microsoft's fault?

5) GTK themes vs. KDE themes. I don't care if you like programing with GTK 2/+ or with QT libraries, but would it kill you to figure out some easy way to make the actual windows look somewhat similar? I have my awesome theme for KDE, I don't want to do some stupid hack that doesn't work 100% or wait for the author to convert the same theme to GNOME to get my graphical programs to display the same.

And now sit there with a straight face and tell me every application you use on Windows has the exact same theme if you will. Even if you limit yourself strictly to Microsoft products you'll find large inconsistancies between various applications. That being said, with Red Hat's bluecurve theme, without knowing beforehand due to naming or whathave you, I can't tell Gnome and KDE applications apart at all really. Or at least it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb like you seem to indicate.

Oh, and on a side note, can you please figure out why KDE's sound system is so terrible. I do not want to wait a few minutes for KDE to let go of the sound system so I can fucking start Neverwinter Nights.

I'll agree there, that sound under Linux can be painful at times. But then I've noticed a huge improvement with the latest releases of Fedora. That and perhaps you shouldn't blame KDE for the faults of your Neverwinter Nights application.

6) man pages. Explain the contents of a man page for a basic command to a casual user. If he is utterly confused, rewrite it. At least group the fuctions into 'most used' and 'never use in a million years'

First of all, Linux shells, bash and the like, are not some dumbed down shell like you'll find on Windows. The Linux cli is very very powerful. That being the case the documentation on using it can seem a bit complicated at times. I do agree that i

Re:Fresh Dupe

[Sturm]

Do duplicate stories in some way, shape or form hurt you? Do they cause evil or bad fortune to descend upon you and your family? Do they offend your delicate sense of what is good and just in the universe? Do they cause you to have pimples on your ass?
If you answered "No" to all the above questions, maybe you should quit your whiny-ass bitching about duplicate stories and contribute something meaninful to another discussion.

Re:How does this benefit RH?

[SirTalon42]

RedHat already fullfills their obligations under the GPL and then some. Anyone is free to download the source of RHEL.

Re:What is official RH distro then?

[tux_deamon]

what Redhat in effect is doing is creating a division between Redhat and the Fedora project much like the division between Redhat and SuSE.

Not exactly. Fedora is essentially the groundwork for future editions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Yes, they are different distros, but the division is not that significant. Structurally, they are very much the same.

Re:Will MPlayer ever be a Fedora Extra package?

[bankman]

Here you can find a summary of the mplayer-debian status.

Re:Will MPlayer ever be a Fedora Extra package?

[MasterOfMagic]

Debian does not ship mplayer for two reasons: first, the official reason: there are too many legal issues that they do not wish to tackle. Second, in the past, maintaners, developers, and contacts with mplayer have resulted in more heat than light, for example this message.

Though there is an attempt to resolve these issues. Documentation of these efforts is avaliable on one of the Debian developer's websites.

Re:Which open source community was that?

[tux_deamon]

But Red Hat didn't remove their "personal" distro, they just renamed it "Fedora Core". They've provided a fairly robust infrastructure for supporting it.

And even though the product that pays the bills retains the name "Red Hat", it's as Open Source as any distro you can find. That's why I can download distro's like CentOS and WhiteBox that are exact clones of RHEL developed almost exclusively from the SRPM's released openly by the RHEL project.

If anyone in the OSS community is annoyed by the reoganization, it's probably because it is a little confusing. But this is it in a nutshell:

One product is a cutting edge distro for all of us to enjoy using and developing.

One product is the stable branch of an older version of the community disto that's packaged and sold with support to big corporations who gain from chosing the software.

There's nothing wrong with selling OSS. Consider RMS:

"Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible -- just enough to cover cost.

Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can." - Richard Stallman

Red Hat employs developers who not only use OSS, but contribute a great deal of it back to the community for all of us to enjoy -- even those of us who don't run Red Hat distributions personally. Again, RMS:

"Red Hat's contributing to the GNU project by hiring people to write on the GNU desktop, Gnome, which is a very useful contribution."

Red Hat is a company, people

[mcrbids]

As a company, it serves its own best interests. It has always been honorable in doing so.

You will not find Red Hat "stealing" OSS code, compiling it into proprietary work, and not telling anybody. You won't find them attempting to "extend" open code with proprietary extensions without releasing those extensions, too.

They pay for a good, healthy staff of developers that work almost solely on GPL and otherwise released code. They release source binaries as though all their stuff was GPL, even with projects that are BSD-ish licensed.

It's not that difficult to take their source RPMs and create your own "Enterprise Linux", as done by Scientific Linux, Cent O/S, and (my favorite) Whitebox Linux.

I don't like that they don't support good old "RedHat Linux" like they used to, but as a company, RedHat has been nothing but good for the community. If you choose to have a hissy, then enjoy your hissy, and move on to Debian/Gentoo/LFS/Ubuntu/Mandrake/Whatever/YALD (Yet Another Linux Distro) to your heart's content.

But, I see no sign that RedHat is doing anything evil at all.

Re:Will MPlayer ever be a Fedora Extra package?

[Tony Hoyle]

Debian doesn't ship mplayer - it's not in unstable or even non-free.

It's just that some people have made .deb packages for it. They're unofficial though.

Re:If by "belly up" you mean...

[stor]

continuing to provide updates to legacy redhat/fedora systems since their inception, then I guess you are right.

I'm a Red Hat fan but if the above is true please tell me where to get security update RPMs for RedHat 8.0. At the moment I'm building SRPMs of Apache2 and the dependencies I have to fulfil are staggering. Automake, autoconf, pcre, etc need to be updated. This is going to take me a day to update Apache because I need to compile all this stuff.

Debian seems to handle this situation a whole lot better.

Cheers
Stor