Foundations

This page explains the Four Foundations of the Fedora Project -- the core values of our community. The Four Foundations sprung from work on the Fedora marketing plan, and have replaced the old "infinity, freedom, voice" slogan. That slogan originally emerged from the design of the Fedora logo. That design has become a very powerful and effective part of Fedora's brand and image, but does not sufficiently describe our core values in a clear and effective way.

Freedom

Freedom represents dedication to free software. We believe that advancing software freedom is a central goal for the Fedora Project, and that we should accomplish that goal through the use of the software we promote. By including free alternatives to closed source or proprietary code and content, we can improve the overall state of free software and limit the effects of closed or proprietary code on the Project. Sometimes this goal prevents us from taking the easy way out by including proprietary or closed source software in Fedora, or using those kinds of products in our other project work. But by concentrating on the free software we provide and promote, the end result is that our releases are predictable and 100% legally redistributable for everyone, innovation in free software that can equal or exceed closed source or proprietary solutions, and a completely free project that anyone can emulate or copy in whole or in part for their own purposes.

Friends

Friends represents the strength of our community. The Fedora community is made up of people from all walks of life, working together to advance free software. There is a place in Fedora for anyone who wants to help, regardless of technical skill level, as long as they believe in our core values. Like any friends, we occasionally disagree on details, but we believe in finding an acceptable consensus to serve the interests of advancing free software. We believe in a strong partnership between Red Hat and our enormous volunteer community, since they both provide essential contributions that help the Fedora Project succeed.

Features

Features represents our commitment to excellence. The Fedora community creates many of the technical features that have made Linux powerful, flexible, and usable for a wide spectrum of millions of users, administrators, and developers worldwide. We recognize the status quo is worth changing when the potential gain is to empower additional end-users, or create a more flexible and powerful environment for building new solutions on the free software we provide. We also believe that these changes are best developed in direct concert with the upstream software communities whose work is part of the Fedora distribution. We work with the upstream in cases where we find opportunities for improvement, so all free software users benefit -- regardless of their distribution of choice. Our feature development is always done openly and transparently, and anyone may participate.

First

First represents our commitment to innovation. We are not content to let others do all the heavy lifting on our behalf; we provide the latest in stable, useful, and powerful free software in our Fedora distribution. An examination of the latest Fedora platform at any point in time shows the future direction of the operating system as it is experienced by everyone from the home desktop user to the enterprise business customer. Our rapid release cycle is a major enabling factor in our ability to innovate. We recognize that there is also a place for long-term stability in the Linux ecosystem, and that there are a variety of community-oriented and business-oriented Linux distributions available to serve that need. However, the Fedora Project's goal of advancing free software dictates that the Fedora Project itself pursue a strategy that preserves the forward momentum of our technical, collateral, and community-building progress. Fedora always provides the future, first.