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Fedora: Open-source repository for long-term digital preservation

121 points2 monthsfedorarepository.org
fodmap2 months ago

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.

jasoneckert2 months ago

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).

macintux2 months ago

And predates Fedora by about 6 years.

cevn2 months ago

I was ready to be mad in the comments, now I'm mad but in the other direction.

stronglikedan2 months ago

Don't be mad, they are clearly distinct — one is FEDORA and the other is Fedora!

ameliaquining2 months ago

It seems that in 2003 (when Fedora Linux first launched) this project was pretty obscure and early-stage, so it's hard to blame Red Hat for not having known about it then. This kind of thing just happens sometimes.

+1
j452 months ago
phkahler2 months ago

Right or wrong, who owns the trademark?

fodmap2 months ago

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/

+3
notpushkin2 months ago
+1
t90fan2 months ago
tsak2 months ago

The hat!

> The term fedora was in use as early as 1891.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora#History)

RickJWagner2 months ago

Thanks for that explanation. Totally threw me for a minute.

j452 months ago

Didn't think about the Linux distro at all because the software was clearly described as otherwise.

actionfromafar2 months ago

And they have Fedora Slack(ware)!

iNate20002 months ago

Wait - I saw a link to a Slack chat workspace. Do they have something for Slackware Linux as well?

actionfromafar2 months ago

No, sorry it was that I meant. Also confusing when you are primed to think RedHat -> Fedora -> Slackware :)

sitta2 months ago

Perhaps also of interest is the storage format that Fedora 6/7 uses.

https://ocfl.io/

ThinkingGuy2 months ago

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.

cramcgrab2 months ago

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.

treesknees2 months ago

https://fedorarepository.org/232540-2/

> Upgrades for over 40 dependency libraries, including upgrading Java 11 to Java 21.

jjice2 months ago

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.

cramcgrab2 months ago

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.

billdueber2 months ago

Gopher came out of the U of Minnesota. Their teams are the “Golden Gophers.”

cramcgrab2 months ago

Aah yes, that’s right

nticompass2 months ago

Hello fellow RIT alum! :-D

Yehoshaphat2 months ago

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.

moron4hire2 months ago

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.

Dwedit2 months ago
moron4hire2 months ago

Thank you. Have a specific project at work that it might be relevant towards.

Kwpolska2 months ago

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.)

macintux2 months ago

FEDORA is years older than Fedora.

zoobab2 months ago

FTP was better.

Dwedit2 months ago

FTP is great for the hackers who want to sniff cleartext user passwords over insecure public wifi.

economistbob2 months ago

FTPs used to have anonymous logins unless one was on a LAN, so sniffing passwords was not very relevant.

mason_mpls2 months ago

SFTP

NedF2 months ago

[dead]

economistbob2 months ago

[flagged]

jbstack2 months ago

Wrong Fedora

esseph2 months ago

It's not RH/IBM, but you wouldn't know that because you didn't read anything about it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46244011

From the website;

Name History

In 1997 a research project at Cornell University was named the Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture (FEDORA). In 1998, Payette and Lagoze published an article about their work referencing Fedora, and later that year software with the same name was released to the public.

linhns2 months ago

How to not name your project, exhibit 1

macintux2 months ago

It's older than Fedora Linux.

modzu2 months ago

if your little company was still named Google would you keep it? they just seem petty (the ™ on their logo lol)

derleyici2 months ago
unsungNovelty2 months ago

Wow! Like Christopher Nolan more now!