Re: Red Hat / Fedora relationship (was: The Inquirier on F17)

[Ilyes Gouta]

Hi,

This is just a little thought, wouldn't that sentence/title just The
Inquirier's sarcastic (and funny) touch to the published article? which is
kind of a regular procedure for them as far as IT news reporting is
concerned?

At the end of the day, Fedora is the community-driven disribution strong
throughout the years, whereas RHEL is just the commercial product.

-Ilyes
On Jun 1, 2012 5:22 PM, "Emanuel Rietveld" <codehotter(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  On 06/01/2012 05:02 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Jun 01, 2012 at 02:03:19AM +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
> >
> >> On 05/31/2012 03:27 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> >>
> >>> Red Hat people who contribute to Fedora are community too.  There's
> >>> not a dividing line with the community on one side, and Red Hat on the
> >>> other.
> >>>
> >>
>  This is a very positive viewpoint and I'm glad that it gets expressed here
>  and other places. Still, there are some ways, of course also due to
>  history, in which the Fedora Project and Red Hat are not completely
>  independent.
>
>  Red Hat ultimately controls the Fedora trademark and the Fedora domain
>  names, and pays for the Fedora infrastructure. What is shown on Fedora
>  websites, and what is called Fedora, is ultimately under Red Hat control.
>  This leaves Red Hat in an unique 'negotiation position' for influencing the
>  direction of the project that other contributors do not have.
>
>  Complete independence would mean that the trademark, domain names, and
>  infrastructure are under the control of a legally and functionally separate
>  entity, which is donation funded. I am not necessarily taking the position
>  that such an arrangement would be beneficial to Fedora, just saying that
>  such a level of independence would be subtly, yet significantly, different
>  from the current situation.
>
>  It would take explicit marketing effort from both Red Hat and Fedora
>  Project for 'the public' to see Fedora as larger than Red Hat; to see Red
>  Hat as a community member, a small contributor, working to the larger whole
>  of Fedora. Especially considering that this is, in several important
>  senses, not true.
>
>  Let's take a step back. Most of the negative influence of the Red Hat
>  relationship on the Fedora brand is the idea that Fedora is a lower quality
>  product than RHEL, which Fedora is eventually 'distilled to'. That
>  perspective is crucial for Red Hat's business positioning, and is probably
>  true for Red Hat's customers, but it is not true in general.
>
>  Fedora and Red Hat serve vastly different purposes, and for many purposes,
>  RHEL is the inferior product. To whom is Fedora the better quality product
>  and do those users read the inquirer?
>  --
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>
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