The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software. Development will be done in a public forum. The project will produce time-based releases of Fedora Core about 2-3 times a year, with a public release schedule. The Red Hat engineering team will continue to participate in building Fedora Core and will invite and encourage more outside participation than in past releases. By using this more open process, we hope to provide an operating system more in line with the ideals of free software and more appealing to the open source community.
Freedom and Rapid Innovation

Firstly, Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that provides users with access to the latest free and open source software, in a stable and easy to manage form. We strongly believe in the bedrock principles that created all the components of our operating system, and because of this we guarantee that Fedora will always be free for anybody, anywhere, to use, modify and distribute.

Fedora is more than just software, though. It is a community of contributors from around the world who work with each other to advance the interests of the free culture movement. Everyone is invited to join, and no matter what your skills are, we have a place for you in our community! The Fedora community includes software engineers, artists, system administrators, web designers, writers, speakers, and translators -- all of whom will be happy to help you get started.

What makes Fedora different?

We try to always do the right thing, and provide only free and open source software. We will fight to protect and promote solutions that anyone can use and redistribute. With this in mind, all of our developers are focused on working closely with upstream, so everyone can benefit from our work and get access to our changes as soon as possible. Because of the huge amount of innovation that Fedora drives, this focus has had significant and long lasting effects. Some of the recent developments in free and open source software that Fedora has driven include:

*NetworkManager
*D-Bus
*PolicyKit
*PackageKit
*HAL
*FreeIPA
*SELinux
*PulseAudio

The reverse is also true: by sticking close to upstream development teams, Fedora often gets the latest software before anybody else. Not only does this benefit our community, but it also benefits the upstream teams by providing a much larger audience and more feedback for them.

Another striking difference of Fedora is our goal to empower others to pursue their vision of what a free operating system should be like. Fedora now forms the basis for derivative distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the One Laptop Per Child XO and Creative Commons' Live Content DVDs.

And that's not all. It is just as easy for individuals to create their own distribution, thanks to Fedora's easy spinning tools. These tools allow you to quickly select the packages you want, and create a live CD or installation disc. Some official versions of Fedora have grown up this way, including:

* Fedora Electronic Lab
* Fedora Xfce Spin
* Fedora Developers Spin
* Fedora Games Spin