Hi I have been using both Fedora and Redhat EL systems and it seems to me that the split between these distributions makes it more easy for Fedora to form a community with a set of third party repositories and packagers working with it while Redhat EL is left out in the cold with a few exceptions like dag's repository. One of the reasons is that Redhat EL is tied into a subscription model (ie) the binaries are not available for free from Redhat itself. While third party rebuilds like centos(centos.org) do a good job of filling that need, it might be more beneficial for Redhat to supply the binaries and ISO images itself without a support subscription attached to it. A subscription would only be available for a fee. Benefits * Business strategy is clear, Software is free. Support costs. * Prevents Redhat EL(or even Linux itself) being called a costly affair * Redhat can actively form a community just like what it is trying to do with the fedora project Disadvantage - From a business viewpoint One of the reasons seems to be that people would download the software and expect Redhat to support it too. I see a few choices to make that clear to the end user * A click through agreement that says the software is unsupported. * called it redhat-unsupported-(arch).iso * A nag in the installer warning that the software is unsupported when its the download version. Remove all the trademarks and stuff you need to protect and swap it with a free set of things you dont need to care about.. Bandwidth ISO images are only available directly to those who mirror it. up2date, yum or whatever never points to the redhat mirrors in the downloaded version and instead switches between the free mirrors as required Since those who want to use it for free are going to use a rebuild anyway, I dont see a potential loss there. Your thoughts? ===== Regards Rahul Sundaram __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail