Founder Warren Togami, Red Hat Focus Free software | Type Community | |
Motto Freedom. Friends. Features. First. Founded September 22, 2003; 13 years ago (2003-09-22) Products 389 Directory Server, Fedora operating system | ||
The Fedora Project is a project sponsored by Red Hat to co-ordinate the development of the Linux-based Fedora operating system. The project was founded in 2003 as a result of a merger between the Red Hat Linux (RHL) and Fedora Linux projects. The project consists not only of Red Hat employees, with community members worldwide making up 75% of all contributors within the Fedora Project.
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History
The Fedora Project was founded on 000000002003-09-22-000022 September 2003 when Red Hat decided to split Red Hat Linux into Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and a community-based operating system, Fedora. Red Hat Professional Workstation was created at this same time with the intention of filling the niche that RHL had once filled but it was created without a certain future. This option quickly fell by the wayside for non-enterprise RHL users in favor of Fedora. The Fedora community continues to thrive and the Fedora distribution has a reputation as being a FOSS distribution that focuses on innovation and close work with upstream Linux communities.
Security intrusion
In August 2008 several Fedora servers were compromised. Upon investigation it was found that one of the compromised servers was used for signing Fedora update packages. The Fedora Project stated that the attacker(s) did not get the package signing key which could be used to introduce malicious software onto Fedora users' systems through the update process. Project administrators performed checks on the software and did not find anything to suggest that a Trojan horse had been introduced into the software. As a precaution the Project converted to new package signing keys.
Fedora published the full details on 30 March 2009.
Governance
The Fedora Project is not a separate legal entity or organization; Red Hat retains liability for its actions. The Fedora Council is currently the top-level community leadership and governance body. The Council is composed of a mix of representatives from different areas of the project, named roles appointed by Red Hat, and a variable number of seats connected to medium-term project goals. The previous governance structure (Fedora Board) comprised five Red Hat appointed members and five community-elected members. Additionally, Fedora Project leader had a veto power over any board decision; in the current model, all voting members can block on issues, with a valid reason. Red Hat at one point announced intentions to create a separate Fedora Foundation to govern the project, but after consideration of a variety of issues, canceled it in favor of the board model currently in place.
The project facilitates online communication amongst its developers and community members through public mailing lists and wiki pages. It also coordinates an event known as the Fedora Users and Developers Conference (FUDCon). FUDcon is a free software event held in various regions around the world, usually annually per region.