[Discuss] CentOS 6.0 finally passes QA testing

[me at mattgillen.net (Matthew Gillen)]

On 06/17/2011 11:37 PM, Bill Bogstad wrote:
>> Meanwhile, Red Hat has already released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1, so
>> they're still more than six months behind, and won't be getting most of
>> the the key security fixes that do go into the 6.1 errata update kernels.
> 
> I'm confused by this statement.  I realize that Red Hat is no longer 
> distributing kernel source in such a way as to allow someone to easily
> determine what each patch does. I don't, however, see how this matters if
> all one wants to do is run the 'same' kernel as Red Hat.   The monolithic
> source for the entire Red Hat kernel should still be available. Is Red
> Hat actually going to distribute binary kernel objects for which source
> code is not available?  This seems like an obvious GPL violation to me.

No, nothing like that. You can still get the exact sources used to build the
kernel.  Redhat has stopped separating the stock kernel and their patches.
The intent (as far as I can tell) is to make it so derivative distributions
(esp. Oracle) don't get Redhat's QA for free (at least for the kernel
package; it appears that the kernel package is the only package affected by
this new policy).

This has some more detailed info:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/04/red_hat_twarts_oracle_and_novell_with_change_to_source_code_packaging/

Matt