Oracle, SUSE and CIQ start Open Enterprise Linux Association after RHEL paywall
Oracle, SUSE and CIQ, the team behind Rocky Linux, are jointly launching the Open Enterprise Linux Association. The three companies will join forces with OpenELA to “encourage the development of RHEL-compatible Linux distros” by providing source code.
Oracle, SUSE and CIQ announce their collaboration in a press release. According to the three participants, OpenELA will be a partnership to ‘encourage’ the development of Linux distributions compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The three companies will therefore make open and free Enterprise Linux source code available.
Later this year, OpenELA will deliver the sources ‘required for the existence of downstreams compatible with RHEL’. The foundation will initially focus on RHEL versions 8, 9 and possibly 7. The materials will be freely available and may be redistributed by anyone. The three companies invite other organizations and members of the Linux community to join OpenELA.
The creation of OpenELA stems from “Red Hat’s recent changes to the availability of RHEL source code,” OpenELA writes. “In response, CIQ, Oracle and SUSE are working together to provide source code, tools and systems to the community through OpenELA.” All participants also continue to work on their own Linux distributions.
Red Hat said in June that the RHEL source code will no longer be generally publicly available, but only offers it to Red Hat Enterprise customers. This makes CentOS Stream, the development branch of RHEL, the only publicly available repository where the source code is published. That makes it more difficult for other parties to develop and maintain RHEL-compatible distros.
Several alternative Linux distributions use RHEL, including Rocky Linux from OpenELA participant CIQ. Although distro developers can still obtain the source code with a Red Hat license, redistribution limited under that license. The team behind Rocky Linux previously said it was making the change probably no major consequences for the distro, as the team can obtain the source code via other methods. Oracle criticized in June on Red Hat’s changes. SUSE said last month that it will maintain its own RHEL fork and make it freely available.
Source: SUSE