On 03/23/2011 11:53 AM, Ray Van Dolson wrote: > My two cents are that if you have those stringent of requirements you'd > be using RHEL, anyways. > > I'd be interested to hear an expansion on this a bit more. Claims or > no claims, SL is rebuilt from RHEL sources just as CentOS is. Are > there specific examples of ABI breakage introduced? > > It would be great to see these two fantastic projects collaborate (and > I know they do to some degree already). I think what really gets lost here is that just because a package is rebuilt from the same package sources, it doesn't mean that it is exactly 100% binary compatible. SL has stated that they maintain compatibility but certainly do not guarantee it. By and large, most packages probably are ABI identical and some may be slightly off but you may never even notice it. However, if you ever did encounter cases where there differences, that may cause major headaches for you. The only way I could see the two projects 'merging' would be if the CentOS goals remained and established the base OS and SL became the addons and enhancements repo. Similar to the CentOS plus repo, ABI compatibility may have to be broken by the SL additions but that would be an end user choice. I kind of thing that as others have mentioned already, keeping them separate allows for more choice for the end user base. Some people could care less about RHEL compatibility. Some may not care a helluva lot but would prefer to have it lest they be bitten in the backside at some point, and others demand it. For those that demand it, sure purchasing RHEL would be a logical option, but some people really do not need the support agreement. I (certainly like many others on this list) have been running Linux boxes for more years than I can count and I have never had to contact a vendor for support. When I have had issues, I've been able to contact the upstream package provider directly and have managed to get fantastic support far beyond you would ever get from a commercial offering of any sort.