About EPEL
EPEL was started because many Fedora contributors wanted to use the Fedora packages they maintain on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and its compatible derivatives.
Goals of the EPEL Effort
Make high quality packages that have been developed, tested, and improved in Fedora available for RHEL and compatible derivatives such as CentOS and Scientific Linux.
Work closely with the Fedora Project to achieve this goal -- use the same guidelines, rules, policies, and infrastructure, as far as possible.
If we hit problems, solve the problems with the other parties and groups of Fedora, such as Packaging Committee, instead of creating EPEL-only solutions; EPEL-only solutions introduce confusion for packagers and users, and make porting packages between Fedora and EPEL harder.
For the rare cases where it is not possible or desired to remain synchronized with Fedora, maintain add-on documents for EPEL that describe the differences and the reasons for them.
以上取自 Fedora Project Wiki : https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/About_EPEL
