Why are RPM's distro specific?

[Michael A. Peters]

On 01/20/2005 05:10:46 AM, James Wilkinson wrote:
> Marc M wrote:
> > RPMs are for Redhat-based distributions only,
> 
> Robert Locke wrote:
> > Gee, I think that might be a surprise to Suse that they are a
> RedHat-
> > based distribution....
> 
> Well, they were, originally.

Are you sure you are not thinking of Mandrake?

http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/1998-Jan/0360.html

Looks to me like SuSE actually started as slackware, not RH

> Much of the layout and many of the
> commands
> are Red Hat inspired.

which were often inspired by other distro's before RH - and other  
*nixes before Linux.