SUSE wants to push its RHEL fork for the benefit of the community
Continuing with the thread of changes performed by Red Hat to limit access to RHEL code, it seems that SUSE has not let the situation go unnoticed and wants to be part of it, because has announced the creation of its own fork Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
It is mentioned that the new fork which will create SUSE from RHEL will not affect the development of SUSE distributions linux enterprise, ALP (Adaptable Linux Platform) and openSUSE, which are still viewed as core products and will continue to receive development resources without change.
It is worth mentioning that It is not the first time that SUSE is interested in RHEL, since last year he presented the project for the first time Liberty Linux as an edition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 built using the Open Build Service platform and suitable for use in place of the classic CentOS, which was discontinued at the end of 2021. The distribution came with its own version of the Linux kernel, created by rebuilding the kernel package of the SUSE Linux distribution Enterprise 15. The distribution benefited from SUSE technical support and centralized management capabilities using the SUSE Manager platform.
Regarding the RHEL fork, it is mentioned that with this movement to create a RHEL fork, SUSE bets on mixed infrastructures which, in addition to SUSE Linux and openSUSE, also use distributions based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux package base. It is further mentioned that for these mixed environments, it is planned to provide unified technical support, use a unified update delivery process, and use a common set of tools for centralized management based on SUSE Manager.
It is noted that commercial enterprises and the open source community should have the choice and opportunity to break free from being tied to a single vendor.
According to the SUSE director, the shift to proprietary models should not be introduced as a competitive factor among companies building a business around open source software. The basic principle of the interaction of this type of companies is that all contribute to the common cause of the community, and also all benefit from it, since the final result becomes more than the sum of individual contributions.
Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, CEO of SUSE, said:
“For decades, collaboration and shared success have been the building blocks of our open source community. We have a responsibility to uphold these values. This investment will preserve the flow of innovation for years to come and ensure that customers and the community alike are not subject to vendor lock-in and have genuine choice both tomorrow and today.”
SUSE remains fully committed to investing in its highly regarded Linux solutions, such as SLE and openSUSE, which are trusted by countless satisfied enterprise customers and the community.
About the work of the fork, SUSE mentions that the next few years it plans to invest $10 million in support of the project, plus the fork of RHEL, called Liberty Linux, is planned to be developed and maintained as a public domain project organized by an independent non-profit organization.
Access to an alternative set of source code for RHEL-compatible packages, which is being generated by the project, will be free for all and open to collaboration with other similar projects.
Finally, as a personal comment, I can say that this movement by SUSE to promote a product that is an alternative to RHEL, has the objective of not only providing a solution to the recent movements of Red Hat, but it is more than clear that it seeks to be able to capture all that portfolio of clients who are dissatisfied with the changes in RHEL and also those who may be left behind by other projects that create alternatives to RHEL, such as Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux and Oracle, which in the end is not bad since as Mention seeks a mutual benefit both for its products and for the community in general.
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