[Yum] how to handle package name conflicts?

[Joe Smith]

Greets all.

I'm using yum on Fedora 8. I have installed openoffice.org rpms from 
both Fedora and OpenOffice.org (OO.org). I need both for testing and 
other support tasks.

The rpms from the two sources install to completely different locations 
(OO.org rpms under /opt) and there are no file conflicts. However, some 
of the package names are the same.

When updated Fedora openoffice.org packages are available, and I run 
'yum update', the update process removes both the old Fedora 
openoffice.org rpms, and also the OO.org openoffice.org rpms where the 
package names match. Obviously, this breaks the OO.org installation and 
I have to re-install.

When a Fedora update appeared just now, I tried to avoid having yum 
remove the OO.org packages by first removing all the Fedora openoffice 
rpms, then running "yum install ...". No soup. Yum still removed the 
OO.org packages.

E.g. I started with these installed:
openoffice.org-calc-2.3.0-6.6.fc8
openoffice.org-calc-2.3.1-9238

I removed the fc8 package manually, but after the "yum install" to get 
the new Fedora packages, I had left only:

openoffice.org-calc-2.3.0-6.7.fc8

Not only has yum removed packages from two different versions, but it 
removed a /newer/ version (2.3.1) than the one that it installed (2.3.0).

Is there some way I can prevent yum from removing the OO.org packages?

Granted, this is an unusual situation, and that it could be solved by 
changing the package names (like I could ever get that to happen!), but 
even beyond all that, it seems incorrect to me
a) that yum should remove anything when performing an install,
b) that yum should remove all installed packages with the same name, 
even if they are not the packages being updated, and
c) that yum should introduce a restriction that is not present when 
using rpm alone.

Rpm does not have a problem with installing multiple versions of the 
same-named package (as long as there are no file conflicts), and the 
current behavior makes it impossible for yum to manage installations 
with multiple versions of the same package.

Any clues to share?

<Joe