Red Hat Launches New Package Repository for Enterprise Linux

[Rahul Sundaram]

Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:

>>
> Yes, that's exactly what I meant.
> 
> Though from the discussion you two are having, it may seem as if this is 
> going to be an "at your own risk" sort of thing for RHEL users.

Yes. That is the *best* we can hope for.  RHEL is a commercial product 
that comes with support, warranty and services with tedious level of 
backporting, testing etc that guarantees a level of ABI compatibility, 
hardware and software certifications and that is it's value over the 
hundreds of other distributions out there. These are legally enforceable 
requirements specified in a contract. Anything that is not directly 
maintained is going to be automatically excluded. Some security 
certifications also require you all the software and every single check 
in a product to be done by a single vendor and you need to able to 
verify and prove that to get certified and without those certifications 
you are excluded from some specific markets - defense, government, 
financial etc.

So yes, EPEL is not going to be treated as part of the same product with 
commercial support regardless of it's quality since it is volunteer 
work. See EPEL FAQ for more details.

Rahul