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 Hmm... where do I start?  Let's talk about the evolutionary forces at work at Red Hat...

Red Hat has been steadily differentiating its product lines for some time now, placing ever-increasing emphasis on the development, marketing and distribution of its so-called Enterprise Linux products.  Due to the mission-critical nature of enterprise computing and the legal liabilities associated with it,  testing and support requirements for software shipping to enterprise customers are much more intensive than those for a home, small business or home office environment.  The time finally arrived in Red Hat's corporate development when it no longer made good business sense to maintain the "end-user" Linux - their enterprise offerings were where the real money was for a variety of sound reasons.  Rather than spin off the "end-user" products to a separate company, Red Hat took the decision to instead spin them off to a volunteer organization which they would sponsor and support, but which would not be on the books at Red Hat as a corporate asset.  Thus, the Fedora Project.

A lot of people, including me, saw this move at first as a "Microsofting" of Red Hat.  Over time, as I have used Fedora Core and read more on the Fedora website, I begin to understand more of what Fedora is all about.  It only makes sense to make Fedora Core available for download and copyleft distribution on the cheap - it's still a great distribution of Linux (very similar in most respects to Red Hat 9.0) and now can be had for much less than Red Hat could have offered it.  Fedora changes at a more rapid pace than Enterprise Linux, and serves as a sort of test-bed for new ideas (key Red Hat people still contribute to Fedora). Meanwhile, Fedora is now supported by the people who use it, which plays true to spirit of the Open Source movement, anyway.  This frees Red Hat to pursue greater profitability in a highly competetive marketplace while still being able to give back to the community from which it arose.

I'm not convinced it's a perfect arrangement, but it's pretty close.  I wish Red Hat Software and The Fedora Project all the best in the coming years.  It's bound to be an interesting time for Linux.
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