Hello,
OK, I've had a night to think about it, here is my opinion.

If I have my way, Scientific Linux 5 continues on as has been planned. 
We build Scientific Linux 5 ourselves, and let CentOS do what they want.

The two biggest reasons for this, although there are others.

1 - The time frame for this is just too late.  We have been developing 
Scientific Linux 5 for over 3 months.  We have all the details planned, 
from how we are going to do kernel modules, to where the RPMS's are 
going to reside.
CERN might have plenty of time, but the rest of the world wants SL5 as 
soon as possible.

2 - CentOS has *not* shown their plan for CentOS 5 to anyone except the 
inner developers.  Even though we're on their development mailling list, 
they have not said anything about even the most basic things.  Such as, 
will they have just one main release, or will they be doing "Server" and 
"Desktop".  Or will all their RPM's be in one big directory, or several 
directories.
The link that Jarek showed, doesn't have their CentOS5 beta, it doesn't 
even have their CentOS 4.4 beta.  I don't know the reasoning why, maybe 
it's because of Oracle or something, but they quit doing public beta's.

There are plenty of good things that could come about because of a 
merger, but right now is not the time.  Maybe with SL6/CentOS6.

If SLC wants to save some effort, they can always just put their 
customized rpm's into a repository that we'll happily put as an optional 
repository with the plain Scientific Linux.  In essence, just pretend 
that Scientific Linux is CentOS, and do what you were going to do with 
CentOS.

Troy
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Troy Dawson  [log in to unmask]  (630)840-6468
Fermilab  ComputingDivision/LCSI/CSI DSS Group
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