Technically, whether it happens or not it shouldnt really sway the market too much either way.

I've worked with Cobalt products for a long time before Sun pulled the merger...

and I still work with great Cobalt products, look what happened to netscape... I still use it, and it still suits my needs.

Keep in mind there is a business side to this as well, Redhat is one of the only Linux distro's that I absolutely hate... I'm uncomfortable with it, and the only major thing it has left is it's popularity. If AOL and Redhat do pull some merge, it will probably be benificial to both products, however the changes to the products will be unnoticed. The changes that will happen will be more on the marketing/funding front. I dont see AOL integrated with Redhat or vice versa.... but then again the new cobalt systems (even though owned by SUN now) are running intel processors..... It's the business side that will change... more in AOL's favor through the exploitation of the popularity of "open source".

Who knows, maybe with the change, AOL might actually improve... punch out a second product for those of us who prefer functionality over "user friendliness".

dont fear it... dont hate it.... dont agree with it either unless you have a couple million to sway someones business plan... theres nothing you can do.

For me... as long as SuSE, FreeBSD, and Solaris are around... I'll live

just my opinion

~THEJRC~