On May 31, Red Hats sponsored and community-supported open-source Fedora Project released the latest version of its distribution: Fedora 7. Besides being a cutting-edge Linux distribution, it features a new build capability that enables users to create their own custom distributions. Fedora 7 now boasts a completely open-source build process that greatly simplifies the creation of appliances and distributions that can be targeted to meet individual needs.
Max Spevack, leader of the Fedora Project, stated: “With our new open-source build process, our community of contributors will enjoy much greater influence and authority in advancing Fedora. The ability to create appliances to suit very particular user needs is incredibly powerful. This is the first version of Fedora where nothing happens exclusively behind Red Hats walls,” explained Spevack. “Its all been open-sourced and pushed out to the community. Previously Red Hat built Fedora Core, while the community worked on Fedora Extra.” Bill Nottingham, Red Hats engineer and Fedora Project board member, in January 2007 announced that Core and Extra would merge. Fedora 7 does away with this distinction; the new single Fedora repository is accessible to Red Hat employees and community members alike, giving the community more influence over Fedora than ever before.