IMO, there is a rather large market segment that Red Hat is not addressing.
The long time "guru" Linux user in small and medium businesses that:
1. Require no technical support from RH 2. Want to run "up2date-nox -u" for more than 1 year 3. Are turned off by the arbitrary 2CPU/4GB ram ES restrictions 4. Like administering a RH box and don't want to switch distros
Comments?
About topic 2: Maybe you should consider to take a look at http://freshrpms.net/apt/ ?