CNet News.com has a very interesting article on the stance that RedHat and others are taking on the 2.6 Linux Kernel.
The bottom line is that there seems to be some lack of trust in the stability of the kernel at release time and that the big players will rather wait and spend money on backporting features from 2.6 to 2.4 and stick to 2.4 for a while. RedHat also has unfortunate timing with the release of its Enterprise Edition that came out recently and they stick to making yearly releases of that.
I think finally the world has learnt from the burning it took on the 2.4 kernel branch, the file corruption and other bugs that was present in a number of "production" kernels, and is now being more cautious about what it will take and what it will not. This is a very good step one that may bring Linux - in my mind - back to being something you can trust in production. I can only hope that the Linux developers learn from this and treat the stable branch more like a stable branch and less like a play pen.
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