Fedora

Rank: #8

Website: https://getfedora.org/

IRC:

#fedora on Freenode with 707 users online

Description

The Fedora Project is a community of people working together to build a free and open source software platform and to collaborate on and share user-focused solutions built on that platform. Or, in plain English, we make an operating system and we make it easy for you do useful stuff with it.

The Fedora community includes thousands of individuals with different views and approaches, but together we share some common values. We call these the “Four Foundations”: Freedom, Friends, Features, and First.

At the operating system level, we don’t just integrate. We do new things — we build a platform, not just a distribution. The Features and First foundations drive us to innovate. We do all of this as a transparent, collaborative community of Friends, and entirely as open source and free software — Freedom.

The Fedora Project is a center for innovation in free and open source software. In our community,contributors of all kinds come together to advance the ecosystem for the benefit of everyone. The Fedora community contributes everything it builds back to the free and open source world and continues to make advances of significance to the broader community, as evidenced by the regular and rapid incorporation of its features into other Linux distributions. Regardless of which Linux distribution you use, you are relying on code developed within the Fedora Project.

We believe software patents are harmful, a hindrance to innovation in software development, and are inconsistent with the values of free and open source software. While tightly integrating proprietary and patent encumbered components might superficially improve ease of use, this practice does not benefit the community in the long run. The Fedora community prefers approaches that benefit the progress of free software in the future over those that emphasize short term ease of use.

Fedora is more than just software. It is a community of contributors from around the world, including volunteers and Red Hat employees, who work with each other to advance the interests of the free culture movement. Everyone is invited to join. No matter what your skills are, we have a place for you in our community! We are software engineers, designers and artists, system administrators, web designers, writers, speakers, translators, and more — and we are happy to help you get started.

We believe that all contributors should be excellent to each other. By creating an environment for constructive contribution, we can more effectively and successfully compare and challenge different ideas to find the best solutions for advancement, while building the size, diversity, and strength of our community.

The Fedora Council is responsible for stewardship of the Fedora Project as a whole, and supports the health and growth of the Fedora Community. As in any large project, there are many different levels of responsibility, accountability, and decision-making. As a general rule, we want people working on a Fedora subproject to be make meaningful decisions about their areas of interest and expertise. More details are available on our page on Fedora Leadership.