They do? I admin primarily RH and CentOS hosts and I've not noticed this happening with any packages. As a quick test, I installed httpd on my workstation, and

They do? I admin primarily RH and CentOS hosts and I've not noticed this happening with any packages. As a quick test, I installed httpd on my workstation, and it did not get automatically started or even enabled at boot. I don't think there's anything wrong with using packages to control which software is running if you do it right, but I do think it shouldn't be default behaviour.