[ale] Redhat security updates available on RHN only ?

[Joe Bayes]

Jordi S. Bunster typeth:

>I know Redhat is not volunteer based. I know Redhat is not Debian. But,
>why can't they let volunteers mirror their security updates, and allow
>people to run u2date and download from such volunteer driven servers?
>(correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I understood so far, I don't
>use it myself.)

Don't they do so already? The packages are GPL'd, so there's nothing
legal stopping anybody. The technical tools may not exist, but the
format is public, so anybody who cared enough could write their own
without too much trouble. 

I expect that it hasn't happened yet because there's not enough
demand. RedHat provides excellent service at rock-bottom prices. (I'm
one of the freeloaders, and I've never had to wait more than 12 hours
to download the latest packages). I expect most people would rather
just wait that 12 hours (usually much less, actually) than hunt around
for a "volunteer" server which is probably swamped anyway. 

--joe

--
Joe Bayes -- jbayes at spoo.mminternet.com

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