When fedora was announced, the Linux landscape was quite a bit different than it is today, just a few weeks later. I'm writing this because I think the landscape is going to change abruptly once again in the not too distant future, and the fedora project might want to wait for the dust to settle before expending too much energy.
Today we have Novell acquiring SUSE and Bruce Perins is also announcing a rival distro: http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,61166,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2
Many feel as I do that Novell is a stalking horse for IBM, so it's not too much of a stretch to add IBM's weight into the equation. What would happen if IBM acquired both RedHat and Novell? Would that make SCO go away?
I would ask you all to consider that RedHat's Enterprise plans no longer look as secure as they did a few weeks ago. RedHat will have to change their marketing approach to simply acknowledge current reality. Abandoning the low end of the market and asking relatively high prices for support to enterprise clients works when there is no significant competition. I can see the competition shaping up nicely right now however so pricing and support issues will have to be reexamined as the market place adjusts to events. Its inevitable.
I'm not a business analyst, but I don't see why RedHat plans may change significantly because of competition. Fedora allows them to create very competitive product with less effort from RedHat side. The only possible change I can see is creating another cheap enterprise offering based on Fedora.
Compiling packages is not that hard. But newer packages can easily break other programs that depend on them. That's why RedHat always backported security fixes into the older packages. Backporting is quite complex task, that requires good programming skill, and usually way beyond the abilities of simple system administrator.
Don't misunderstand my intentions. I believe the low end of the Linux market needs support and I'm willing to help. I just believe that its prudent to wait a few months and see what shakes out before wasting a lot of effort, especially when industry behemoths are maneuvering.
Anyone needing updates to their systems might want to consider learning how to compile whatever they need from source. It's really not all that difficult. Maybe the fedora project should be a vehicle to teach users how to be more self sufficient in the interim period while we all watch the corporate giants jockey for position.
Pavel
