[Tom4hawk]

So, why is RHEL not using the upstream kernel? It would allow them to avoid those issues with rust&go (and probably other software): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25447752

[bonzini]

RHEL maintains a stable ABI for drivers.

Plus, there are changes (especially around memory management or scheduling) that are fiendishly hard to do regression testing on, so they are backported more selectively.

[waheoo]

Security audit / certification would be my guess.