A Brief History of the Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture (Fedora)

1997-2000:   The original Fedora prototype

• Source code of original Fedora prototype written by Sandy Payette
• Early Fedora research website (available via Internet Archive)
• 1998 paper: Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository by Payette and Lagoze
• 1999 paper: Policy Carrying Policy Enforcing Digital Objects by Payette and Lagoze

2000-2006:   The Fedora Open Source Project

• Collaboration of Cornell University and University of Virginia [website-1] [website-2]
• Grant funding from the Mellon Foundation
• Re-implementation of Fedora in Java and exposed as web services
• Fedora open source versions 1.x through 2.x
• Papers:  Fedora publications

2007-2009:  Fedora Commons

• Fedora Commons not-for-profit organization founded by Sandy Payette
• Start-up funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
• Extend the Fedora open source community beyond founding institutions
• Software and documentation for Fedora versions 3.x

2009-present: Fedora at DuraSpace

• Sandy Payette and Michele Kimpton joined together to establish DuraSpace to support Fedora, DSpace, and an emerging ecosystem of related open source projects and services.  Read more about DuraSpace and its founding history.
• The Fedora Repository project is managed and developed by a vibrant, international open source community
• Fedora4 is a totally new implementation of Fedora developed and released by the Fedora community to continue the Fedora legacy for the next generation