Re: Why Would Fedora be Free ? Can it be Trusted?

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..