To provide an unencumbered RPM based Enterprise Linux distribution that retains enough compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (version 3 and beyond) to allow easy upgrades and to retain compatibility with their Errata srpms. Being based off of RHEL3 means that a machine should be able to avoid the upgrade treadmill until Oct 2008 since RHEL promises Errata availability for five years from date of initial release and RHEL3 shipped in Oct 2003.
Or more briefly, to fill the gap between Fedora and RHEL.
在White Box LINUX (http://whiteboxlinux.net/)站点上明确指出:
Red Hat DID NOT build RHEL3 from the published srpms. Period, end of story. They didn't even build taroon from it's source. Openssl's srpm does not build the same binaries as the ones supplied in taroon and it is the same srpm as the one in RHEL3. I'm porting in a copy from fedora which builds correctly. Plus the package set is not self sufficient to actually build itself, several additional srpms need to be tracked down. Intentional GPL violation or carelessness? I'm reporting, You decide.
题外话：红帽子野心路人皆知阿．谁知道这家公司会不会成为OpenSource领域的第二个微软．不过，只要有垄断，就有对抗者．
