Red Hat tries again with developer program
Two years after its first attempt fell short, Red Hat is trying again to reach beyond its own employees for help developing its Linux product.
In early 2003, the Raleigh, N.C.-based company launched Fedora, a free Linux package. The company had two objectives. It hoped numerous users would be drawn to the gratis software, making it a good proving ground for components the company was considering for use in its top-selling Red Hat Enterprise Linux package.
It also hoped to inspire those users to begin developing and maintaining their own components within Fedora--making Red Hat a more vital and central part of the open-source realm, boosting the number of enthusiasts familiar with its products, and making Fedora a better beta program for RHEL. Three versions of Fedora have been released so far, and the company is happy with how they've helped RHEL. But the community effort has fallen short at a time when students and open-source enthusiasts have plenty of other channels for their cooperative energies.
