[HN Gopher] Fedora: Open-source repository for long-term digital...
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Fedora: Open-source repository for long-term digital preservation
Author : cernocky
Score : 90 points
Date : 2025-12-12 13:23 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fedorarepository.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (fedorarepository.org)
| fodmap wrote:
| To avoid misunderstandings, this repository is about a project at
| Cornell University named the Flexible Extensible Digital Object
| Repository Architecture (FEDORA), not a Red Hat one.
| macintux wrote:
| And predates Fedora by about 6 years.
| cevn wrote:
| I was ready to be mad in the comments, now I'm mad but in the
| other direction.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Don't be mad, they are clearly distinct -- one is FEDORA
| and the other is Fedora!
| phkahler wrote:
| Right or wrong, who owns the trademark?
| tsak wrote:
| The hat!
|
| > The term fedora was in use as early as 1891.
|
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora#History)
| fodmap wrote:
| Both. '...all parties settled on a co-existence agreement
| that stated that the Cornell-UVA project could use the name
| when clearly associated with open source software for
| digital object repository systems and that Red Hat could
| use the name when it was clearly associated with open
| source computer operating systems.'
|
| https://fedorarepository.org/about/our-history/
| notpushkin wrote:
| > The transferable agreement stipulated that each project
| must display the following text on their web site: [...]
|
| Looks like Cornell-UVA satisfied this by placing it on
| their about page. Red Hat on the other hand hid it on a
| dedicated legalese page nobody will read:
| https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/legal/
|
| Not a good look IMO.
| Andrex wrote:
| Due to their comparative popularity, it makes complete
| sense to me. You don't have people in HN comments for a
| new Fedora release going "Wait is this about the Digital
| Access Project?"
|
| What does "not a good look" even mean in this context?
| Getting tired of this phrase's overuse tbh. "Think of the
| optics" fell into disuse and I can't wait for this one to
| join it.
| supercheetah wrote:
| Red Hat is the bigger party here. Their minimization of
| this issue seems a little like bullying.
| Andrex wrote:
| There is no issue except the one third-parties (such as
| HN commenters) are making out of it.
|
| Fedora and FEDORA reached an agreement a long time ago.
| Unless I missed something, neither party has disparaged
| the other in that time. The parent comment is making
| drama out of literally nothing. Neither side cares so why
| is parent OP trying to stir shit up?
|
| As the kids say, "not a good look."
| kasabali wrote:
| > What does "not a good look" even mean in this context?
|
| it's a kind way of saying they're being assholes?
| richardfontana wrote:
| So first of all IAARHL (and I do a lot of work supporting
| Fedora) but IANARHTL. That said, I have seen the actual
| agreement (but many years ago), which predates my arrival
| at Red Hat by some years, but don't have immediate access
| to it and am disinclined to hunt down a copy solely
| because of this thread. However, my recollection of it is
| that it was quite a bit more specific than the Cornell-
| UVA paraphrase as to where the parties expected the
| notice to appear. My further recollection is that it was
| the Cornell-UVA FEDORA that was not really complying with
| the letter of the agreement as to that issue, rather than
| the Fedora Linux Fedora, essentially the opposite of what
| you're saying. To settle this we'd have to get the
| agreement and do some Wayback Machine research, which I'm
| also disinclined to do at the moment.
|
| Now, as to why it's on the Fedora Legal Docs site today,
| that's because a few years ago we undertook a significant
| migration of all "legal" content from the basically
| deprecated Fedora Project wiki to the newly created
| Fedora Legal Docs site. In general, such material is now
| much easier to find than it was in the wiki era (where it
| was spread across multiple wiki pages). I don't know when
| the trademark notice first came to be placed on the
| Fedora wiki, which itself didn't always exist, but I
| believe when Cornell-UVA and Red Hat signed the
| agreement, Fedora may have still been using a redhat.com
| site.
| t90fan wrote:
| > associated with open source software for digital object
| repository systems and that Red Hat could use the name
| when it was clearly associated with open source computer
| operating systems.'
|
| If it's as worded, I'm surprised Fedora Directory Server
| didn't end up being a problem for RedHat, as its not an
| OS, and you could call it a digital object repository
| system, I guess.
|
| Or maybe thats why they re-branded it as 389 Directory
| Server?
| richardfontana wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's not why it was rebranded; the timing
| doesn't make sense since the rebranding occurred several
| years after the trademark coexistence agreement.
|
| The curious question though is why 389 _was_ formerly
| called Fedora Directory Server. From what I 've been told
| by someone who was around at the time (as I wasn't), it's
| because Red Hat went through a very brief period where it
| experimented with using the "Fedora" brand as a sort of
| general "upstream of Red Hat, sponsored by Red Hat" sort
| of community brand. This was I think quickly rejected as
| a bad idea but Fedora Directory Server was apparently the
| one (for a while) surviving example of the experiment. I
| imagine that the reason for the rebranding was that it
| was confusing to use the "Fedora" name at a certain point
| because the directory server project never really had
| anything particularly to do with Fedora (apart from the
| connection to Red Hat).
| RickJWagner wrote:
| Thanks for that explanation. Totally threw me for a minute.
| jasoneckert wrote:
| It took me far too long to figure this out from their site, but
| when I did, the project looked far less interesting.
|
| For a while there, I thought the "been in existence for 20+
| years and our users represent an engaged, supportive and
| invested global community of users focused on sustainability
| and growth" was the Fedora Project extending their expertise in
| file organization and distribution to other use cases.
|
| But on the bright side, I now have a link I can use to confuse
| my students with (to keep them out of their comfort zone and
| promote deep research).
| actionfromafar wrote:
| And they have Fedora Slack(ware)!
| iNate2000 wrote:
| Wait - I saw a link to a Slack chat workspace. Do they have
| something for Slackware Linux as well?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| No, sorry it was that I meant. Also confusing when you are
| primed to think RedHat -> Fedora -> _Slack_ ware :)
| zoobab wrote:
| FTP was better.
| Dwedit wrote:
| FTP is great for the hackers who want to sniff cleartext user
| passwords over insecure public wifi.
| economistbob wrote:
| FTPs used to have anonymous logins unless one was on a LAN,
| so sniffing passwords was not very relevant.
| cramcgrab wrote:
| Wow. Java 11. Looks like a great project for an update. Anybody
| know where we can get a group of CS students to update the code
| with a modern toolset? Used to be MIT, Clarkson, Cornell,
| Berkeley, RIT, etc cranked this stuff out.
| treesknees wrote:
| https://fedorarepository.org/232540-2/
|
| > Upgrades for over 40 dependency libraries, including
| upgrading Java 11 to Java 21.
| jjice wrote:
| Total tangent from the OP, but neat to see RIT listed here
| (among some excellent universities)! What kind of things has
| RIT done like this? Just a curious alum.
| cramcgrab wrote:
| They were big in software for the one laptop per child
| project:
|
| https://www.rit.edu/news/rit-class-develops-applications-
| sup...
|
| And, while not open source, built this:
| https://dirsig.cis.rit.edu/
|
| Also, I remember some kind of early realtime music
| accompaniment software, the guy played trumpet and the
| software played realtime accompaniment.
|
| Also, MIT built X11, which later turned into a bureaucratic
| exercise instead of software project.
|
| Berkeley, well BSD Unix.
|
| Early web projects came out of Michigan, like gopher.
|
| Not much lately though.
| billdueber wrote:
| Gopher came out of the U of Minnesota. Their teams are the
| "Golden Gophers."
| cramcgrab wrote:
| Aah yes, that's right
| nticompass wrote:
| Hello fellow RIT alum! :-D
| moron4hire wrote:
| Do they have a separate website for a git repo, e.g. Github?
| Between me reading the page in bed this morning and then driving
| to work, the website seems to have gone down.
| Dwedit wrote:
| Their Github is https://github.com/fcrepo/fcrepo
| moron4hire wrote:
| Thank you. Have a specific project at work that it might be
| relevant towards.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Were they so unoriginal that they had to steal the "fc"
| abbreviation from the Linux distro as well? (In the Linux
| distro, it comes from the original name "Fedora Core"; the
| abbreviation is most visible in package versions.)
| macintux wrote:
| FEDORA is years older than Fedora.
| linhns wrote:
| How to not name your project, exhibit 1
| macintux wrote:
| It's older than Fedora Linux.
| modzu wrote:
| if your little company was still named Google would you keep
| it? they just seem petty (the (tm) on their logo lol)
| derleyici wrote:
| Nothing petty about it:
| https://www.ridetenet.com/pages/a-letter-from-nolan
| sitta wrote:
| Perhaps also of interest is the storage format that Fedora 6/7
| uses.
|
| https://ocfl.io/
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| Are there any images (or actual demos) of the actual user
| interface? Every variant of search for "Fedora repository screen
| shot" just brings back instructions for taking a desktop screen
| shot on the Fedora operating system.
| Yehoshaphat wrote:
| It is interesting to me that I came across this project earlier
| this week (MLS student, procrastinating via browsing Awesome-
| Lists), and now it's here on YN.
|
| Maybe some stoner can vibe-rebase this with Rust.
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(page generated 2025-12-12 23:00 UTC)