“If you’re reading this article in Red Hat
Magazine, it’s hard to imagine that you
don’t know the story of RPM, the package
manager that is the core of so much of Red
Hat’s Linux experience. From a
beginner’s first installation to the Free and
Open Source Software (FOSS) developer’s latest
Fedora release, RPM is inherently part of the Linux user
interaction. But what happens when a core piece of software suffers
from politics and agendas, cruft, and bad
decisions—or no decisions at all?“RPM has endured a little of each and is now at a crossroads.
This article examines some of the decisions, indecisions, and
bungles that led to the current state of RPM…”