>>> PS:
>>> according to http://lwn.net/Articles/430098/
>>>
>>> Is SL really based on an "obfuscated" kernel tarball?????
>
> That article is not really accurate. While it is true that the
> individual kernel patches are no longer available to the public, they
> are available to RHN subscribers.

Yes, but SL (or CentOS) users are not necessarily RHN subscribers.

My point is that it must be possible to read those complete kernel sources 
which (would) allow me to reproduce the identical binaries I am running on my 
machine. But "yumdownload --source" enables exactly that.

As I understand (now), the things which are obfuscated are the patches that 
allow everybody to go from "somewhere" (e.g. official kernel sources) to the 
final product (RH) kernel sources. I am personally happy with that. And while 
it is not impossible to reverse engineer the patches anyway, I totally 
understand that it is unfair doing that when the reverse engineer makes money 
out of it in his turn.

Thanks for the quick explanations and philosophical discussion!
 									Dirk