[Rdap] NEWS RELEASE: The Fedora 4 Production Release is Now Available—Not Your Dad’s Fedora

[Carol Minton Morris]

*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*

December 4, 2014
Contact: David Wilcox <dwilcox at duraspace.org>
Read it online: http://bit.ly/12vIgCu

*NOW AVAILABLE: Fedora 4 Production Release—Not Your Dad’s Fedora *

*Groundbreaking new capabilities make Fedora 4 the repository platform of
choice for right now and into the future.*

*Winchester, MA*  The international Fedora repository community and
DuraSpace are very pleased to announce the production release of Fedora 4.
This significant release signals the effectiveness of an international and
complex community source project in delivering a modern repository platform
with features that meet or exceed current use cases in the management of
institutional digital assets. Fedora 4 features include vast improvements
in scalability, linked data capabilities, research data support,
modularity, ease of use and more.

Fedora 4 features were collaboratively chosen and developed by a virtual
team of developers and stakeholders from around the globe. With DuraSpace
support this committed team has ensured that Fedora Repository software
will meet the emerging needs of the academic research community now and for
the next decade.
• DOWNLOAD Fedora 4: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Downloads
• RELEASE NOTES:
https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Fedora+4.0.0+Release+Notes
• DOCUMENTATION:
https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FEDORA40/Fedora+4.0+Documentation
• VIDEO: http://youtu.be/Mg_QFDAspoE

*Community Kudos*
Robin Ruggaber, Chair of the Fedora Steering Group and Library Chief
Technology Officer at the University of Virginia commented on Fedora’s
achievements: “The success of the Fedora community today is rooted in the
way it operates. The community members govern, fund, shape and produce the
solution to meet global repositories’ needs and performance requirements.
The development is based on what product owners need and is managed so that
everyone in the community can contribute without individually exhausting
human or financial resources. We are maximizing the power of distributed
development and ownership and are rewarded with a sustainable, low risk,
moderate cost solution.”

Stefano Cossu, Director of Application Services, Collections at The Art
Institute of Chicago offered his reasons for adopting Fedora 4: “We have
searched far and wide for a system that could store our large and diverse
collection of art objects and their related assets, integrate in a complex
architecture of legacy applications and data sources, and make our digital
resources available in a wide variety of ways.

We have adopted Fedora 4 very early for its scalability and flexibility in
all its aspects, its adhesion to solid standards, the project's
long-sighted goals and the extremely talented and motivated community
around it.”

*Fedora 4 support for linked data—what it means for you*
The broad concept of linked data is the idea that the semantic web can
connect everything. Fedora 4 makes that concept real.

With built-in linked data support Fedora 4 offers the ability to develop
discovery tools in compliance with the W3C Linked Data Platform
specification. The long-held linked data promise of broad and deeply
faceted discovery on the open web is based on the concept that information
can be exchanged using the resource description framework (RDF) as a
standard model. The ability to share data openly and take advantage of the
semantic web means that content is not “inside a silo” that can only be
discovered and re-used if repository software adheres to standardization
and interoperability. With Fedora 4 the “Web is a repository” providing new
kinds of digital collections and data sources for services and
applications.

*Scalability—how big is big*
As larger data sets, larger files, research data and multimedia use cases
have emerged in the community Fedora 4 is set to meet the challenge of
improved scalability. Fedora 4 repositories can manage millions and
millions of digital files along with extremely large files of any type
running on top of back-end storage systems. This means that petabytes of
storage are available to you because Fedora can potentially operate on top
of any storage system via a pluggable, expandable connector framework.

*Flexibility and extensibility—plugging into what works*
The strength of Fedora repository software lies in it’s native flexibility
and extensibility.  Fedora 4 architecture builds on a lightweight core
model with multiple, pluggable components and a standard set of robust APIs.

*Security*
Fedora 4 provides a pluggable, extensible security framework capable of
supporting a variety of authorization systems. Two initial systems have
been implemented—role-based authorization and XACML. A third, based on the
emerging W3C Web Access Control standard, is currently being planned. By
decoupling security from the repository core, Fedora 4 supports existing
authorization standards rather than maintaining a custom security framework.

*Clustering*
Clustering connects multiple Fedora 4 nodes in a network providing
horizontal repository scaling for high-availability use cases. By
configuring two or more replicated Fedora 4 nodes to run behind a
load-balancer, you can evenly distribute web traffic between the nodes to
maximize performance.

*Fedora 3.8–a solid release to cap off the 3.0 line*
Fedora 3.8 has always been planned as a part of Fedora 4 development. The
aim was to cap off the 3.0 line with a solid release for the user
community. The Fedora 3.8 release features an improved REST API interaction
with correct headers returned for better caching along with performance
improvements and bug fixes.

• DOWNLOAD Fedora 3.8: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FEDORA38/Downloads
• DOCUMENTATION:
https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FEDORA38/Fedora+3.8+Documentation

*The Fedora 4 Community of Contributors*
*Members*
Arizona State University Libraries
Brown University Library
Case Western Reserve University Libraries
Charles Darwin University
Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL)
Columbia University Library
Cornell University
Docuteam GmbH
Durham University
Duke University Libraries
FIZ Karlsruhe
George Washington University
Ghent University Library
Gothenburg University Library
Indiana University
ICPSR
Johns Hopkins University Libraries
La Trobe University
London School of Economics & Political Science
LYRASIS
Macquarie University
National Library of Medicine
National Library of Wales / Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru
National Research Council of Canada
Northeastern University Libraries
Northwestern University Libraries
Ohio State
Oregon State
Pennsylvania State University
Princeton University
Rutgers University Libraries
Smithsonian Institution, Office of Research Infomation Services
Stanford University
State and University Library of Denmark
The Art Institute of Chicago
Tufts University
University of Alberta
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of Cincinnati
University of Connecticut Libraries
University of Hull
University of Lausanne
University of Manitoba
University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
University of New South Wales
University of Notre Dame
University of North Carolina
University of Oklahoma Libraries
University of Oxford
University of Pittsburgh
University of Prince Edward Island
University of Rochester Libraries
University of Texas Libraries Austin
University of Toronto
University of Virginia
University of Wisconsin
University of York
Uppsala University Library
Yale University
York University

*Contributors*
*Sprint Developers*
Adam Soroka (University of Virginia)
Andrew Woods (DuraSpace)
Anusha Ranganathan (University of Oxford)
Benjamin Armintor (Columbia University)
Ben Pennell (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Chris Beer (Stanford University)
Eddie Shin (Digital Curation Experts)
Eric James (Yale University)
Esme Cowles (University of California, San Diego)
Giulia Hill (University of California, Berkeley)
Greg Jansen (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Jared Whiklo (University of Manitoba)
Jonathan Green (discoverygarden inc.)
Jon Roby (University of Manitoba)
Kevin S. Clarke (University of California, Los Angeles)
Longshou Situ (University of California, San Diego)
Michael Durbin (University of Virginia)
Mike Daines (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Mohamed Mohideen Abdul Rasheed (University of Maryland)
Nigel Banks (discoverygarden inc.)
Osman Din (Yale University)
Paul Pound (University of Prince Edward Island)
Scott Prater (University of Wisconsin)
Vincent Nguyen (Centers for Disease Control)
Ye Cao (Max Planck Digital Library
Yinlin Chen (Virginia Tech)
Yuqing Jiang (discoverygarden inc.)

*Community Developers*
Aaron Coburn (Amherst College)
Chris Colvar (Indiana University)
Frank Asseg (FIZ Karlsruhe)
Kai Sternad (Independant)
Nikhil Trivedi (Art Institute of Chicago)
Rob Sanderson (Stanford University)
Robin Taylor (University of Edinburgh)

*How Does DuraSpace Help?*
DuraSpace (duraspace.org) works collaboratively with organizations that use
Fedora to advance the design, development and sustainability of the
project. As a non-profit, DuraSpace provides business support services that
include technical leadership, sustainability planning, fundraising,
community development, marketing and communications, collaborations and
strategic partnerships and administration.

*About Fedora*
Fedora (fedorarepository.org) is an open source project that provides
flexible, extensible and durable digital object management software. First
released in 2004, it has hundreds of adopters worldwide, with deep roots in
the research, scientific, intellectual and cultural heritage communities.
It is supported by its community of users, and stewarded by DuraSpace.

-- 
Carol Minton Morris
DuraSpace
Director of Marketing and Communications
cmmorris at DuraSpace.org
Skype: carolmintonmorris
607 592-3135
Twitter at DuraSpace <http://twitter.com/duraspace>
Twitter at DuraCloud <http://twitter.com/duracloud>
http://DuraSpace.org
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