Red Hat Legal Delays F18 Codenaming

Hopefully you're not too anxious to know the codename for the future Fedora 18 Linux release, which will serve as the successor to Fedora 17's Beefy Miracle. Red Hat's legal department has caused a delay in coming up with the codename for this Fedora release due out in H2'2012.

Coming up with the Fedora codenames via contributor suggestions has generally been an interesting but odd event with a colorful selection of possible codenames each cycle. With Fedora 17 it's been arguably the oddest codename with the "Beefy Miracle" title; heck, even Ubuntu developers like it. While many see the Fedora codenames as just good fun, some Fedora users have grown concerned about the names.

In fact, last month a "Connotation analysis for Fedora Project codenames" was brought up on the Fedora advisory board mailing list. Some are calling for the Fedora codenames to even be abandoned. There's some people that say the codenames have no use, they are a waste of time and effort, no one remembers the name, and the names are potentially devisive, among other reasons. Others just see the Fedora codenames as some easy and light-hearted fun (and some entertaining Phoronix articles).

Now in coming up with the Fedora 18 codename, the proposal period happened last month, but there appears to be some delay within Red Hat Legal. Voting on the Fedora 18 codename by Fedora contributors was supposed to begin last week and then result in the codename being announced this Friday, but that hasn't happened yet.

Here's some interesting foods from a Phoronix dinner that are unique/interesting (and tasty) enough for possible Fedora codenames...

No F18 voting has yet to take place and now on the Fedora Project Wiki there is just, "The following steps have been delayed until we get the list of approved names back from Legal."

What are the possibilities for Fedora 18's name? The full list of possible names can still be found on the Wiki, but among the "reasonable" sounding names are Chamoy or Gama or Achilles or Titania, but there's also other "interesting" ones like Cucumber, Vegetarian Ding-Dong, Juicy Bacon, Ultra Vegan, Wonderful Coffee, Creamy Belief, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Rotating UFO, Yak on my Sofa, Macho Burrito, Tune A Piano, and Eyjafjallajökull.