How “Geeko” Lost His Mojo
It’s pretty darn clear that to make mojo, SuSE Linux Professional needs to look deep into its roots and re-birth itself as a public, open source project similar to Fedora.
In 2003, when Red Hat abandoned its GNU Public License (GPL) version of Red Hat Linux in favor of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and the deeper pockets of corporate customers, the Linux community and Red Hat fans cried out with (rightful) accusations of abandonment. Indignant, many went looking for greener pastures in the forms of Debian, Mandrake, Xandros, and other end-user distributions with free, community versions.
But within months, before much damage was done, Red Hat realized its mistake, did an about-face, and launched the Fedora Project — a GPL spin-off of the RHEL code base that serves as the company’s bleeding-edge technology demonstration. Now, almost two years later, Fedora Core is in its fourth iteration, amassing hundreds of thousands of users along the way. Building on that success, a Fedora-based version of RHEL was recently released, complete with changes and improvements that have been contributed by the community. And, just this past February, Red Hat expanded the Fedora project, opening it up to even more contributors and even more community involvement. Red Hat — and its community — are rosy.
