My group did not, and I do not, need the cradle-to-grave pinocchio 
support that is provided by some (many?) support contracts. SL was 
ported and maintained by professionals who are paid staff of the 
entities that provide the distro (Fermilab from which this list is 
housed, and funded and collaborated by CERN), not by volunteers and 
amateurs.  For commercial (typically for profit) and some government 
entities, using the products of and the (cradle to grave) support and 
training (not intellectual education, but technical training) from a 
"certified" vendor (such as IBM RH), including your entity, use that 
avenue for critical infrastructure.  For many "academic" researchers, 
who nonetheless require "rock solid" infrastructure, the SL (not 
amateur) solution was fine.  A volunteer based level of porting and 
support typically fails to meet this need, particularly as the number of 
lines of source code of the systems have grown enormously in most recent 
systems.  It essentially is impossible for a single human (included a 
well educated and experience computer science practitioner professional) 
to maintain the details of the entire system (each statement, "line of 
source code") in her/his expert memory.  Software engineering has not 
kept up with the real complexity of current systems, one of the causes 
of the number of software defects (and compromise vulnerabilities) we 
all now face.  Amateurs and part-time professional volunteers typically 
exacerbate this situation.

On 12/10/20 8:18 PM, ~Stack~ wrote:
> On 12/10/20 4:47 PM, Yasha Karant wrote:
>> Again, my own needs are such that it is unacceptable to have a 
>> volunteer (and in many cases, amateur) developer/support arrangement 
>> for "mission critical" systems and applications software.
> 
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> Well, there is Red Hat for professional support. Or if you don't like 
> that option, Oracle Linux.
> 
> For our critical infrastructure, it will probably remain Red Hat proper 
> for that reason. However, my small team and I will probably continue to 
> pursue RH training classes then feel comfortable enough to maintain the 
> hundreds of non-critical servers with a community backed variant.
> 
> Give it a month or so. I heard about another project starting up to be 
> yet another variant today. I have a feeling that there will be more. And 
> the better ones will emerge and I think we will all be able to make a 
> more informed decision on our own directions in January when the initial 
> excitement has died down. I do believe it is wise that you are following 
> and keeping informed about the variants.
> 
> ~Stack~