[CentOS] CentOS-6 Status updates

[Nicolas Thierry-Mieg]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
>
> Am I alone in regarding epel as more or less a part of CentOS?
> Does it have a rival in this role?

you may not be alone, but you're still wrong: epel is not part of centos 
at all.
It's just another third party repo.
There are others including some reputable and widely used:
http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories