In 2023, Red Hat implemented a policy restricting access to RHEL’s source code, making it only accessible to customers or partners. This move aimed to complicate the use of RHEL’s source code for non-customers, without violating the open-source license agreement. As a result, developers faced greater challenges than before.
Three companies, namely CIQ (the creators of Rocky Linux, founded by RHEL’s creators), Oracle, and SUSE, joined forces to establish the Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA) to address this issue. They announced plans to pay for RHEL customer subscriptions and then share the source code openly to the public.
Over a year later, OpenELA announced the successful extraction and release of the latest version of RHEL’s source code on OpenELA’s GitHub. Any individuals or organizations interested in developing with the latest version of RHEL’s source code could now access and use it for free, with updates following closely behind Red Hat’s official portal updates.
Moving forward, it is likely that all three companies, Rocky Linux, SUSE Liberty Linux, and Oracle Linux, will transition to using OpenELA’s source code to maintain compatibility with RHEL. On the other hand, distributions like AlmaLinux, not part of OpenELA, have declared that they may not prioritize full compatibility with RHEL.
Source: OpenELA, The New Stack
TLDR: Red Hat restricted access to RHEL’s source code, leading to the establishment of OpenELA by CIQ, Oracle, and SUSE. OpenELA now provides free access to the latest RHEL source code for development purposes, fostering compatibility between various Linux distributions.
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