I would like to also point out that the decision to cut the development of scientific Linux came after pressure from fermilab administration. They had the classical, why not just rely on Redhat CentOS and save the efforts. Ironically after the plans were announced and the community was shocked. In less than a year RedHat announced that they will stop developing CentOS.

And now instead of making a review of their decision and see the actual needs and think about cutting the reliance on RedHat, they went fully dependent on RHEL (one can say that CERN takes part of the blame too).