> At some point ...

Yasha you are writing some very strange stuff.

> NDA collaboration contracts that exist for the various
> CERN/Fermilab experiments ...

if your NDA stands for "non-disclosure ...", then I must say that
I do not believe there are any secret agreements between experiments
and linux vendors. We do have NDAs with hardware vendors for
access to secret documentation and secret firmware source code,
but I never heard of any special agreements with any Linux vendors.

if you know something we do not know, please tell us more.

> ... Your observations on RHEL indicate that except for those
> who license RHEL for fee with an IBM RH support contract, RHEL is
> not an viable stable long-term (nor immediate) alternative.

I must put it on record that I did not say any such thing.

I say:

a) RHEL8 is here and you can use it free of charge (16 free subscriptions)
b) you can upgrade your CentOS-8 machine to RHEL8 with minimum trouble (I posted instructions on this list here)
c) Red Hat made a serious mistake back in December by announcing "the end of CentOS as we know it" without providing (a) and (b) ahead of time
d) by not providing 32-bit x86 and 32-bit ARM versions of RHEL they are at a severe disadvantage in places like a typical Physics lab (CentOS used to provide both, but they killed it).

So there. There is nothing wrong with RHEL8. If it works for you, use it!

-- 
Konstantin Olchanski
Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow!
Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca
Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada