The Votes Are In, and the Next Fedora Will Be...A Ship?

Ongoing for nearly three months now, the Fedora Project's election season appears to have finally come to a close. Beginning in November with nominations for the Fedora Project Board and various project committees, and continuing through an election and appointment cycle that stretched into early January, only the election to determine the project's next release name remained. That was until this past Saturday, when it was revealed that Fedora 11 will bear the appellation Leonidas.

The official announcement of the new release name came, as usual, by way of a message from Fedora Project Leader Paul Frields, with a succinct note thanking the various individuals and groups involved for their work. The winner emerged from a field of eight candidates, each of which was required to pose the question "Cambridge is a(n) [...], and [candidate] is too," hopefully with [...] representing a unique or novel connection between the two. The final selection, Leonidas, offered a connection by way of maritime history: "Cambridge was a ship of the Union Navy, and Leonidas was too."

For the curious, or those with a penchant for naval antiquities, the USS Leonidas was a former whaling ship purchased in 1861 by the U.S. Navy as part of the Stone Fleet, which was intentionally sunk in Charleston Harbor to prevent ships from breaking the naval blockade of the Confederate states. The USS Cambridge was a U.S. Navy gunboat, commissioned in 1861, assigned for the whole of her career to patrolling in the aforementioned blockade.