Phil, > > While you're at it, perhaps you might check out WBEL 3.0, Tao Linux > > 1.0, and CentOS-3 respectively at: > (...) > Thks Phil, I knew about them. Even though they all seem terrific, they > all share the same problem AFAICS: if RH ever decides to drop the public > RHEL SRPMs, these distros automatically cease to be updated, right? RH can't drop *all* RHEL SRPMs, because the GPL and LGPL forces the to provide the sources used to build the binary packages shipped. And thus is easier/cheaper for RH to provide the SRPMS it uses than to build a different set of tar.gz source packages just to complying to the GPL. Of course, they could drop any BSD, MPL and other OSS packages which don't include source distribution obligations like the GPL does. Then, would it be worth the effort to orgazine, for each RHEL release, which packages should have their sources published, and which shoudln't? The GPL don't say they have to provide sources for download. It just states they have to provide the source tree used to build the distributed binaries (and not simply a patch file against the original sources!) for whoever requests them, at no extra costs other than shipping. But it's easier and cheaper just to publish them on a FTP or HTTP server than having an office worker to attend the requests for sources. A final point: These distros allow people to "try for free" RHEL. The selling point of RHEL distro is not the distro itself, but support services and partnerships with Oracle, IBM, Veritas and others. Users of these free RHEL-derived distros have a high probability of choosing Red Hat when they need enterprise-grade services. So it is not on the best interest of RH to kill then. The fact they do not use the griffe Red Hat is enough to protect RH financial interests - they are no more competition than other distros, and RH cannot kill the others. But having RH-based distros in fact say the market RH has a leadership on technology, it's free advertising. The day RH things otherwise, it'll be a dead company, and his user base would have migrated to SuSE or another "enterprise" comercial Linux vendor. []s, Fernando Lozano
