Red Hat: Fedora will engage customers

Yes, I actually have heard that Red Hat sort of ‘got out of step’ with a number of desktop Linux lovers as a lot of their energy went into their server products. To be honest, I see no point in blaming anyone as this sort of thing can happen with any company. But as News.com explains, Red Hat is now working to repair any hurt feelings that may have been had.

The problem came in recent years when Red Hat threw its energies into a stable product called Red Hat Enterprise Linux. RHEL let the company grow from a small market of technically savvy customers to the large market of mainstream customers.

But in the process, Red Hat left those “early adopters” behind, said Michael Tiemann, vice president of open-source affairs. That was a problem because Red Hat–a pioneer in the business of open-source software–believes customers should be directly involved in designing and creating products from the earliest stages.

The company now is trying to rectify the situation with a more aggressive Fedora project that’s designed to engage again with those customers and outside developers. Part of that effort was the first-ever Fedora User and Developer Conference (FUDCon) held Friday at Boston University.

“One of the mistakes we made when we launched this Enterprise Linux product was we focused so exclusively on this enterprise market that we left this (early-adopter customer) square uncovered,” Tiemann said. “It insulted some of our best supporters. But worse, we lost our opportunity to do customer-driven innovation.”