Core Principles
Fedora is about the rapid progress of Free, Open Source software and content.
Fedora believes in the statement "once free, always free".
Objectives of Fedora
- To create a complete general-purpose operating system built for and by a community — those who not only consume, but also produce for the good of other community members.
- To build the operating system exclusively from free and open source software.
To do as much of the development work as possible directly in the upstream packages. We will in general prefer moving to a newer version for updates rather than backport fixes.
- To provide a robust development platform for building software and robust general integrated set of software that balances the needs for both desktop and server users.
- To be on the leading edge of free and open source technology, by adopting and helping develop new features and version upgrades.
- To emphasize usability and a "just works" philosophy in default configurations and feature designs.
- To promote rapid adoption of new releases by allowing for easy upgrades, with minimal disturbances to configuration changes.
To include a wide range of packages that fits into the various different needs of the users. This package set is limited, of course, to packages that Fedora can legally provide, and also subject to our packaging guidelines.
- To establish and implement technical standards for packages, ensuring the quality and consistency of the operating system.
- To produce robust releases approximately every six months, using a release model that takes a balance between both features and time, and allows the development team the flexibility that it needs to ensure code quality, but also ensures that a release does not slip indefinitely.
- To provide timely updates for releases, throughout the lifetime of a release.
- To promote a global perspective by supporting as many languages and geographic locales as possible.
- To ensure that releases will always be available for free download in binary, source packages and as downloadable images.
Non-Objectives of Fedora
- Fedora is not interested in having a slow rate of change, but rather to be innovative.
Fedora is not interested in being a platform for proprietary components.
- Fedora shall not be a dumping ground for unmaintained or poorly designed software.