New distro releases imply:

1) security fixes,
2) bug fixes,
3) new hardware drivers,
4) new applications,
5) and changed behavior (ie, Gnome2 to Gnome3).  
(the list is probably not complete)

How much work (staff hours per year, plus volunteer help)
would it take to do JUST (1) and (2) for Scientific Linux
7.8, 7.9,... forever, assuming that RHEL and Debian
sources were available for plagiarism?

I (and perhaps others) chose SL because it was stable.

I do not need to rebuild my working environment to adapt
to changing fashion.  I get SL for free now (thank you!)
but I wouldn't mind paying an annual subscription fee to
support a small team "keeping the plumbing water-tight
and sanitary".  WITHOUT hiding the sink and changing
the knobs, which is what I would get from RedHat/IBM.

How many of us are willing to pay for this, and to
create, contribute, and maintain scientific "extras"
(like the source code for the data reduction for my
published papers) to share with our small community?

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          [log in to unmask]