fedora versus fedora test

[Mike A. Harris]

On Wed, 8 Oct 2003, Jesse wrote:

>> > From the way it is discussed on the site, it seems like the fedora project 
>> > will be one constant beta test for Redhat to decide what to put into there 
>> > enterprise edition.
>> 
>> Where was it that you got this impression?  There will be both stable
>> and test releases of Fedora Core, just like there used to be both
>> stable and beta releases of Red Hat Linux.  If there's any point of
>> the site that misled you, please file a bug report in bugzilla so that
>> others don't fall prey of the same wrong impression.
>
>Seems like this is the line that may cause that impression:
>
>"It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make
>its way into Red Hat products.

Which is no different from Red Hat Linux.  Red Hat Linux was
itself a proving ground for new technology which later got
included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  Fedora is no different in
this regard.  Some examples of this include major new releases of
core portions of the OS such as the kernel, glibc, XFree86,
GNOME, KDE, and individual features such as NPTL, exec-shield, 
LVM, ext3, and many many other features.

New technology will continue to be included in the base operating
system releases used by the community, as that is the best way to
reach the largest number of people to test the software and
report bugs so they can be fixed.  Wether it is "Red Hat Linux"  
or "Fedora Core" doesn't really matter much, as all that has
changed in this sense is the name (as far as new features (some
possibly experimental) go).

>It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc."

Correct, it's not supported in the sense you can pick up the 
telephone and call Red Hat, and pay for a telephone/web/etc. 
support contract for the OS.  It is supported in the sense that 
users can report bugs in bugzilla, and they will be investigated 
to be fixed in future OS releases, or in erratum releases as 
deemed appropriate.

So there are definitely some changes in the way the OS is
developed, and supported, but they are not massive changes in the
way things are done, nor are they changes that are going to throw
quality out the window and leave users with a permanent beta-test
OS.  Far from it.

In my personal opinion, I fully expect to see our Fedora Core
releases be as high if not higher quality as Red Hat Linux was.  
It has the same Red Hat people working on it as it always has
afterall, only now we're working more closely with the community
to improve the OS all that much more.  And with the community
participating in the future, both with suggestions for
improvement, as well as making some of those improvements and
contributing them, and once the infrastructure is in place to
allow externally maintained packages, I believe that a high
quality OS will not only continue to be produced, but it will be 
higher quality as the more skilled people get involved with the 
project.

I also look forward to seeing things like Fedora/AMD64 and
Fedora/Alpha ports be available, and both several Red Hat
employees, as well as many in the community would like to see 
this occur too.  While nothing official has happened yet WRT 
such, there are definitely enough people interested that it's 
only a matter of time until everything is in place to make it a 
reality.



-- 
Mike A. Harris     ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat