What is the relationship between Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Both the Fedora Linux distribution and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are open source technologies. Fedora is built by the community (fedoraproject.org) for the benefit of the community. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is developed by Red Hat with the explicit intent on being used as an enterprise IT platform.

Developers and Linux enthusiasts flock to Fedora for the latest features and the opportunity to directly collaborate with Red Hat engineering. Banks, stock exchanges, hospitals, and businesses that run the world's leading Web sites choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the platform's performance, stability, and security that enables them to implement mature and well-organized IT infrastructures across the enterprise.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship that ensures rapid innovation. Fedora benefits from the sponsorship and feedback from Red Hat. In turn, Red Hat can bring leading-edge innovation to the broader community for collaboration, enabling a rapid maturation of the technology. The size and expertise of the Fedora community make Fedora an ideal incubator and proving ground for features that eventually get incorporated into Red Hat Enterprise Linux. To meet the quality and reliability requirements that make Red Hat Enterprise Linux the choice for mission-critical applications, Red Hat puts Red Hat Enterprise Linux through its own set of tests and quality assurance (QA) processes that are separate and distinct from those of Fedora.

The Fedora community has thousands of users, contributors, and supporters, who interact through various online forums, email lists, and wikis to support each other. With a rapid development and release cycle, Fedora provides the latest technology on current hardware platforms.

When you choose to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you have a relationship with the leading provider of open source solutions. Not only do you get a robust and stable platform with as much as a 10-year lifecycle, but you also get the benefits of global engineering, consulting, and support organizations. A Red Hat Enterprise subscription gives you access to high-quality software and maintenance along with information and support services that span your entire application infrastructure lifecycle and architecture. Learn more about the value of a Red Hat subscription.

More information on the history of both Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available in this History of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.