I see a lot of posts about Redhat for putting their code base behind a paywall. I’ve only been using Linux as my main desktop OS for a couple of years now. Someone recommended Fedora at the time, and I’ve been happy with it. I had previously tried PopOS, Mint, and Ubuntu, but none of them convinced me to switch from Windows full time until I tried again with Fedora.
How will what Redhat is doing affect Fedora for the home user? Should I start considering something else?
Edit: thanks for all of the responses! Sticking with fedora for now it is.
I don’t think the current Red Hat controversy will have much impact on Fedora. There are the three reasons why I think so:
- While Fedora is not a fully independent distribution, the Fedora Council has both members from Red Hat and members from the community. It may be wishful thinking, but I believe that, if Red Hat tried something iffy with Fedora, the community (including people in leading positions) would protest.
- Fedora is upstream from RHEL, so it doesn’t directly profit from RHEL source codes being fully open. Instead, it’s the other way around; Fedora’s sources are the basis of CentOS and then RHEL, so any bugs fixed in Fedora benefit RHEL.
- Fedora is also Red Hat’s tool for influencing the Linux ecosystem at large. When they want other people start using some technology (Flatpak, PulseAudio etc.), Fedora is a good way of disseminating it.
P.S. There might be some inaccuracies. I am just a user; I am neither a developer nor in any leadership role.
P.P.S. Please excuse any spelling and grammar mistakes. English is not my first language.
Never hurts to have a
Plan Bat hand if Redhat decided to make more unpleasant decisions. Since you already tried some Debian based distros, maybe you’d like to take a look at what openSUSE has to offer.Fedora is designed as a relatively stable testing ground for widespread use. It is incredibly unlikely that they'd ever even want to restrict its distribution, and nobody is signing any contracts with Fedora, so they'd have no leverage to stop us from doing it even if they did want to.
Long term who knows what stupid things Redhat might try to get up to, and even if they don't make any catastrophic decisions the whole project could potentially start to drift away from the rest of Linux if they keep making smaller divisive decisions, but that's both unlikely, and in the far distant future if it ever does happen. For the more foreseeable future there is absolutely nothing to worry about with Fedora, other than possibly ethical concerns that you're helping to bug test for the makers RHEL, if you care about that.
