I respectfully must slightly disagree with you.

In terms of security fixes and new hardware drivers, the issues of 
backporting (that is, to make a bit of software compatible -- buildable 
-- with the core gcc/g++ environment of a "very old" Linux, including 
SL) may require a great deal of work.  Unlike those environments that 
use "micro-kernels", Linux (thanks to Torvalds' insistence) is a 
monolith, and changing one aspect of a monolith often changes many other 
aspects.  (A micro-kernel -- "Mach" -- approach more easily can have 
encapsulation and "isolation.)

New hardware drivers are needed if one is using the environment on a 
platform that has "current" hardware for which new hardware drivers are 
needed.  This is more common on a laptop workstation, but happens on 
servers and real-time control and data acquisition systems (e.g., the 
experimental environment of HEP).

Could an SL7 base be kept up to date on these issues?  Probably. 
However, a technical staff of a few (less than five) full time 
professionals might not suffice given the number of lines of source code 
that are involved.  Moreover, the current professionals who maintained 
SL at Fermilab/CERN may not want to be involved, given that each may 
have a "permanent" "real job" position at Fermilab/CERN or a 
participating entity (e.g. a university).  Thus, your subscription model 
may not be practical -- and the use of volunteers or compensated "Gig 
economy" "workers" does not result in stability.  Stability requires 
compensated permanent professionals (except for those who are 
independently "wealthy" and are willing to be permanent "volunteers", an 
unlike staff arrangement).

Yasha Karant

On 12/13/20 5:36 PM, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> 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
>