Valeri Galtsev wrote:
What secret motive *could* there be?? The current security policy is weak, and this change fixes that. End of story.
It's hard to not endorse everything you are saying. As far as motive is concerned, it is not that secret. Security. RedHat doesn't like poorly administered machined with RHEL linux get hacked, then many voices saying saying in the internet: RHEL Linux is not secure, RHEL Linux machines are getting hacked. Even though the reason is not what it sounds like.
While I admire RedHat, and use CentOS on my home servers, I would expect RH to give priority to those paying for their services, who I imagine are almost all sysadmins of systems with many users. My interests as a tiny user may not coincide with theirs.
This does not mean that I think there are evil spirits at RH trying to disrupt my life. But it does mean that the inconvenience of strong passwords may outweigh any additional security in my case.