> Perhaps we could do something along the line of
>  * mirroring base CentOS,
>  * providing SL-style "tweak" RPM's in a separate YUM repository
>  * providing site specific separate YUM repositories
>  * maintaining selected releases longer than CentOS does

Currently CentOS declares longer lifetime for v. 3 and v. 4
than we do (they say: as long as Red Hat provides updates):
we at CERN have been obliged to abort support for 64bit
v. 3 release last December (...no manpower ..) ...

If you refer to minor (point) releases, ie: 3.0X / 4.X :
we could select (or maybe just interested sites could select)
to provide updates for branches (X.Y / X.Y+1 / X.Y+2 ... etc)
separately (we at CERN do not need/want this functionality
actually ..)

> 
> We would only then be re-building RPM's for security updates
> on our selected releases for our longer maintenance window;
> but we could get out of the business of rebuilding the whole
> distribution and share that work with the CentOS folks.

We wouldn;t need to even do that: all rpms coming from
RH are rebuilt by CentOS people already: some sites
could just decide which go into which update repository.
(ie: security update is for all X.Y(+n) branches,
while bugfix/enhancement could be for X.Y+2 branch only)

Cheers

Jarek
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