Open Source Communities

The Fedora Project: Open source evolved

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The Fedora Project is an online community aimed at improving the lives of people around the world through free software. Formed in 2003 as a partnership between Red Hat and volunteers from around the world, the Fedora Project supports a growing and thriving open source community with tens of thousands of project members.

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Fast facts

Fast facts

  • New releases of Fedora come out about every 6 months.
  • Fedora is free to copy, modify, and redistribute without any cost or license fees.
  • All of the code in Fedora and all of the tools used to build Fedora are free and open source software.
  • Fedora focuses on building strong relationships with upstream software projects.
  • Red Hat is the primary corporate sponsor for the Fedora Project and a major contributor.
  • There are more than 24,000 Fedora Account System members who have signed the Contributor License Agreement that lets them edit and provide new code and content in Fedora.
  • Around 65% of Fedora's code is maintained by volunteers.
  • Fedora serves as a community technology incubator, where ideas can be turned into reality quickly.
  • Innovation through Fedora often forms the basis for many Red Hat open source projects.
  • The total of unique IPs across Fedora releases since tracking was initiated at Fedora 7 is now approaching 45 million connections.

Fedora 19 features

Fedora 19 features list

  • Developer's Assistant, a tool suitable for beginners or seasoned developers for initiating code projects with language-specific templates, samples, and toolchains
  • 3-D printing capabilities, ranging from software for creation of 3-D models to tools for generating and sending code to 3-D printers
  • OpenShift Origin, a Platform-as-a-Service infrastructure, including a variety of cartridges for developing and deploying applications
  • systemd resource control for modifying service settings without rebooting
  • Virtual machine storage migration, enabling the migration of virtual machines and associated, in-use storage without requiring shared storage between hosts
  • OpenLMI, a common infrastructure for the remote management of systems and storage
  • The latest release of OpenStack, known as "Grizzly," including the incubated Heat and Ceilometer projects

For a complete list of Fedora 19 features, refer to the Fedora community's release announcement.

FAQs

Fedora FAQs

Q: How can Fedora give away all of the code that people have contributed?
A: There are more than 24,000 Fedora contributors who have signed the Contributor License Agreement, which lets them contribute to the Fedora Project. Further, all code and content produced in the Project is provided under a free and open source software license that preserves users' rights to copy, distribute, and make derivative works.

Q: What benefit does a contributor gain from participating in the Fedora community?
A: There are multiple benefits, and individual contributors realize very different individual benefits through their involvement. One major benefit contributors often cite is the act of collaborating itself. Fedora community members enjoy working on new features, solving problems, and interacting with other folks who share a common interest. Because Fedora is an open and transparent project, it also provides a way for people to demonstrate their skills at work to potential partners, customers, or employers.

Q: Why such a short development cycle?
A: The development cycle is purposely restricted to 6 months to encourage rapid innovation and collaboration among thousands of Fedora project contributors worldwide. 6 months gives us the best balance between providing the latest software with the quality that users expect from a release.

Q: Where can I learn more?
A: For more information on Fedora 19, to download the distribution, or to join this community effort, please visit the Fedora Project website.

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Fedora 19

Fedora 18

Fedora 17

Fedora 16

Fedora 15

Fedora 14