Enterprise Linux long-established 'SUSE' announces hard fork of RHEL to create compatible distribution

In response to the completion of the release of the source code of `` Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) '' developed by Red Hat, `` SUSE '', a company developing Linux distributions for companies, is developing RHEL-compatible distributions announced that it was going to embark. In the announcement, it is stated that it will invest more than $ 10 million (about 1.4 billion yen) over the next few years.

SUSE Forks RHEL With Over $10M Investment, Ensuring Choice In Enterprise Linux | SUSE
https://www.suse.com/ja-jp/news/SUSE-Preserves-Choice-in-Enterprise-Linux/

At SUSE We Make Choice Happen | SUSE Communities
https://www.suse.com/c/at-suse-we-make-choice-happen/

' Free software ' is software that has the property that the user who obtains the software can secure all rights including modification, redistribution, commercial use, etc. GNU and Linux are such free software. Developed and contributed by the community.

For example, Red Hat has developed a distribution called Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) based on Linux and is profitable by providing support for companies, but on the other hand, bug fixes during the development of RHEL and By providing code such as function addition to upstream Linux, we have built a win-win relationship with each other.

Red Hat used to provide CentOS to the community as a free version of RHEL, and although it was not supported by Red Hat, it was used by many users because it was a free, high-quality distribution. rice field. The content of CentOS is RHEL, so it is possible to try RHEL operation without trouble, and it is possible to run applications created for CentOS on RHEL. We have built a mutually beneficial relationship, such as having a lot of reference materials.

However, in December 2020, Red Hat announced that it would no longer provide CentOS. The situation at that time is described in detail in the article below.

A storm of criticism from the community at the end of CentOS, the founder of CentOS announces the launch of a new project - GIGAZINE

In the wake of CentOS's demise, new downstream distributions such as 'Rocky Linux' and 'AlmaLinux' emerged as RHEL compatible distributions. These projects provided their distributions by rebuilding the publicly available RHEL source code.

New RHEL downstream 'Rocky Linux' to replace CentOS officially launched - GIGAZINE

Under such circumstances, in June 2023, Red Hat announced that it would stop releasing the RHEL source code. Source code will continue to be provided to customers who have signed a contract with Red Hat, but if the source code is made public, support will be discontinued. It was heavily criticized by the Linux community for

Red Hat stops public release of RHEL source code to customers only, receives fierce criticism from Linux officials who have centered on free software principles - GIGAZINE

Rocky Linux, which was a member of RHEL's downstream project, issued a statement accusing it of ``violating the spirit and purpose of open source,'' while Red Hat said, ``It is a way to develop and maintain open source. Earning money is true open source.' Red Hat doesn't feel the need to do additional work for downstream projects that just rebuild and distribute RHEL and don't contribute to RHEL.' .

Rocky Linux condemns Red Hat's actions on the official blog as 'violating the spirit and purpose of open source', while Red Hat also criticizes downstream projects as 'a threat to real open source'-GIGAZINE

From AlmaLinux, another RHEL-compatible distribution, 'We have expanded the community of users who use RHEL-compatible Linux' A blog post was made to appeal the contribution so far, 'We are preparing the surrounding environment of RHEL in the form of maintenance.'

The AlmaLinux development team emphasizes the contribution so far to Red Hat, which has canceled the public release of the source code, saying that ``downstream projects are worthless''-GIGAZINE

As mentioned above, while various disputes are becoming active between Red Hat and the community, 'SUSE', a company with a track record of developing Linux distributions for enterprises for over 30 years, hard forked RHEL. announced that it will develop and maintain a RHEL compatible distribution that is open and available to anyone. SUSE plans to invest more than $ 10 million (about 1.4 billion yen) for this project over several years.

SUSE emphasizes cooperation with the open source community and states that it will donate the results of the project to the Open Source Foundation to continue providing free access to the source code. Users using RHEL and CentOS will be able to switch support contracts to SUSE without changing the OS, so in this regard SUSE says, ``Instead of competing on the value of the software itself, we will focus on support and security. We should compete on the ability to run critical software through maintenance.'

In May 2023, Dirk-Peter van Leben was appointed as the new CEO of SUSE. Led by Mr. Leben, who once worked for Red Hat for more than 18 years and was a senior vice president and regional manager for Asia and North America, SUSE is likely to cause a big ripple in the enterprise Linux industry. is.