Well.. we can only assume that RH wanted to avoid the expense of RHL in light of the much better supported and maintained external efforts (like Fedora).
You can make money on a straight forard Linux distribution, and indeed several vendors do that. Fedora is about fixing a much more fundmanetal problem - the things that developers want and the things large corporate customers want don't just differ but conflict. So now there are two seperate things.
Sigh....
So (trying to get a straightforward answer)....
Are you saying that Red Hat's RHL was always targeted at the corporate customer? I don't think so.
Didn't everyone tend to feel that Red Hat produced RHAS because "the things that developers want and the things large corporate customers want don't just differ but conflict"? Very likely.
Or was that the whole issue? Did RHAS not come out early enough on so that many considered RHL, even after the appearance of RHAS, to be a fully supported product from RH (which was implied by the RHN subscription mechanism)??
I guess what I'm hearing is that until the creation of "Fedora(tm)" and RHEL, Red Hat really did NOT portray clearly the distinction that existed (IMHO) already between RHL and RHAS. Is that it??
One of them is boring, behind the leading edge and slowly updating (and all the other things that make developers unhappy and CIO's delighted), the other is much more like the old old Red Hat - 3 or so releases a year, people stamping CD's of it cheap and so on. Its leading edge, fast changing, has cool new technologies on it that developers and hackers like but your average CIO really doesn't want.
Uhh... yes... we agree. I certainly did not have any problem with the goals of Fedora... which.. in summary were to "fix the shortcomings of RHL". That is to say, RHL, which was designed to be a boxed hobbiest version of Red Hat, simply could not address the needs of the market it was targetting. So, many external projects were formed and ultimately, Fedora became the most coordinated/active of the bunch.
And so.. we assume (we have to assume since no clear answer seems to be given) that Red Hat opted out of RHL production (which I assumed.. saved Red Hat quite a bit of money) and turned it over (with some RH help of course... and apparently some "guidance") to the community based Fedora project which proved it was much, much better than Red Hat at delivering what the consumer wanted (more updates, better support).
Sounds like Fedora was able to release the product that RHL should have been and many recognized that. So much that RH moved RHL completely to Fedora (normally a company does not eliminate a "good" revenue stream... thus all of the assumptions surrounding all of this). I can't help but feel that some of the original ideas of the original Fedora team are at odds with RH... but given the current circumstances... probably not an issue anymore (?). (perhaps Warren finally got paid.. not with a red cap?)
I'm sorry... seems the more I talk to RH or Fedora(tm) the more confused it all seems to get.... but I will admit, there is a common thread of what I'll call hatspeak: A RH sponsored spinoff of orginal community generated truth.
