Why Would Fedora be Free ? Can it be Trusted?

[WipeOut]

Chalonec Roger wrote:

>All,
>
>I am looking at using Fedora at my work and some people are asking the
>following questions or have the following concerns that I did not know
>how to answer:
>
>1.  Why is fedora free and why would people work on it for free?
>  
>
Becasue the people who work on it choose to..

>2.  Some people are concerned that since Fedora is open source that they
>don't know where the software comes from so they can't trust it.  How
>can they trust it?
>  
>
When you buy MS software you may know where it comes from but you can't 
see the code behind it so they could do anything they like, yet you 
trust their software with the worms viruses and all.. I think I would 
trust open source more because I can look into the code and see for 
myself what it is doing..

>3.  How are updates to Fedora vetted and accepted?
>  
>
The community tests the updates..

>4.  Does Redhat have any involvement with Fedora?
>  
>
Quite a lot.. some may even say too much but its a debatable point..

>5.  Does Redhat use the same processes in "controlling" fedora quality
>and releases as it did the free versions of Redhat?
>  
>
No, Fedora theoretically is more open to the will of the community..

>6. Ostensibly Redhat offered free versions of Redhat Linux because they
>could make a profit on support.  Now Redhat has built a market and
>Redhat is no longer free.  What is the profit motivation of the Fedora
>group and persons/orgs who make software contributions to it?  (By the
>way, there is nothing wrong with profit.)
>  
>
There isn't any for the community... Redhat uses FC as a test bench for 
packages that will make their way into the commercial RH distros so 
thats probably their motivation..

To be honest if you are looking for a Microsoft "style" Linux then you 
need to look at the commercial offerings from RH and Suse which will 
give you all the support options and accountability.. If you don't have 
a problem with profit then you shouldn't have a problem paying for the 
Distro and its support.. :)

Later..