The competition

What would you say is Fedoras greatest weakness and greatest strenght, compared to other distributions.

I think our greatest weakness is that Fedora has to respect software patents and poorly written US laws. The software patent situation in the United States is especially broken, which means we can't provide support for technology like MP3 or MPEG out of the box, even though perfectly functional free software implementations exist. We can't support DVD playback because it would violate the DMCA. We try to turn this into an opportunity to educate our users, but it doesn't always come across that way.

Other distributions which are run by companies in "no-mans-land" countries don't have to try to follow the law, which makes things easier for them, but we don't really have that option. Red Hat and Fedora are constantly lobbying to get this situation changed, to keep these laws from stifling our innovation, and we're making progress, but it won't change overnight. Decisions like the US Federal Court of Appeals ruling in Jacobsen v. Katzer and Re. Bilski are great steps in the right direction.

Our greatest strength is our community of contributors. We have hackers, programmers, artists, writers, editors, ambassadors, and users who are contributing to free software and free content. The distribution moves faster and gets better as a result of this, without this, we'd be just another Linux distribution, a copy of someone else's work.

Do you ever get the feeling of competing with the other alternatives out there? Windows, Mac or even other Linux distributions?

One of the nicest things about FOSS is that when you're really doing it right, when you're contributing code and changes back to the upstream, everyone benefits. So, from that perspective, we really don't feel like we're competing with other Linux distributions that are contributing their changes upstream. With Windows or Mac, I think there is a certain amount of friendly competition, but we're really just trying to build a better product with a better ideology. FOSS conquers by being faster, better, and free, there is no need for a conscious plan to destroy Windows, because, then what? Besides, we get some of our best ideas by simply avoiding Microsoft's mistakes. Hehe.

Mac will release a new version of their operating system in the year's first half, Microsoft hopes to have Windows 7 available in the years second half. How do you think this will affect the Linux user base?

I'm a firm believer that choice is never bad, that competition makes you stronger. The problem with OSX and Windows is that their code bases are evolutionary dead-ends, unless you work for Apple or Microsoft. You can't really take any good code that is inside those platforms and let it spread. I don't really think either of them has the potential to be a "Linux killer" until they stop being proprietary (and even then, I think that much of the FOSS in Linux today would still live on).

At Red Hat, we're very fond of a quote commonly attributed to Mohandas Gandhi: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

What kind of people would you recommend Fedora to? And how would you recommend they go about learning the distribution?

I would recommend Fedora to all kinds of people. I really think the best way to learn the distribution is to use it, it is easy to boot a Fedora Live CD and see if it is a good fit for you, and we support dual booting. We have a large community where you can ask questions, places like fedoraforum.org, #fedora on freenode, our mailing lists. I know it is a bit blasphemous for me to say this, but I'm not a big fan of "Linux books", they go out of date so quickly. For example, Chris Tyler's Fedora O'Reilly book was great, but it's based on Fedora Core 6, which is ancient now.

Would you recommend users of Mac/Windows to get Fedora or another distribution?

Yes, I would recommend Fedora. You're not going to get me to plug another distribution here, I freely admit my bias. Hehe.

I take it you use Fedora yourself?

Of course! I think to be as involved as I am with the technology that makes up Fedora, I don't have much choice except to run Fedora, but even if I retired from all of that, I would still run Fedora.

I started out on Slackware, then moved to Red Hat Linux. I've run a few other distributions for a while, Debian, SuSE, LFS, but I always went back to Red Hat Linux, then Fedora. To me, it always seemed like that RHL and Fedora was where the innovation was happening, as opposed to some of the slower moving distributions. Plus, I liked that with RHL/Fedora, I had the option of hacking on it, but I wasn't required to. I understand the appeal of LFS or Gentoo from a learning perspective, but I just quickly run out of time and patience to be building every component myself.

In the end, is there something you wish to say which hasn't been covered in this interview?

Fedora is always looking for new contributors, hackers, coders, artists, writers, translators, testers, and users. Interested people should check out join.fedoraproject.org to find out how they can get involved.

I'm also always happy to hear from people about Fedora, both when they're happy and when they're not. This doesn't mean I'm volunteering to be your personal Fedora support technician, or even that I will fix your bugs, but I'm always listening.

We thank Tom "Spot" Callaway for his time in participating in this interview, and wish him the best of luck on future endevours.