Fedora: still Red Hat's baby
Red Hat earlier this month pledged to loosen its grip over the Fedora version of Linux it helped launch, a free and fast-changing alternative designed to appeal to eager developers and to quickly mature features the company wants to add to its commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux version. The company is moving "development work and copyright ownership" to the newly created and more neutral Fedora Foundation.
A few days later after announcing the foundation, though, a Red Hat executive indicated that the company will still remain in the Fedora driver's seat.
"Red Hat will also maintain ultimate overall control of the project to ensure that we continue to have timely, high quality releases," Red Hat's Karen Bennet, vice president of Linux tools and applications Red Hat, said in a posting on a Fedora news blog. "There are no current plans to change the Fedora Core distribution project, processes and management."
Red Hat is working to trim down the central part of Fedora, called Fedora Core, and shift responsibility for many components to the accompanying Fedora Extras. Bennet also said another project is still in the works, called Fedora Alternatives. "Fedora can only expand by enabling individuals and groups to contribute rather than consume," Bennet said.
Red Hat released Fedora Core 4 on June 13.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
