CentOS, a free Linux distro functionally compatible with its upstream source, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, says it's ending support for recently announced CentOS 8
CentOS has been the free rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and killing support for freshly released CentOS 8 pulls the floor out from under anyone who ran production workloads on it as an RHEL substitute without paying Red Hat. The move matters because it foreshadowed exactly what followed: Red Hat later tightened its source code policy, limiting outside access to RHEL sources and angering the open-source community.
First-order effects
CentOS 8 users lose a functionally RHEL-compatible free distribution, forcing a choice between paying Red Hat, migrating to another distro, or running unsupported software.
Red Hat removes the free-rider dynamic where its own published code fed a no-cost competitor to its commercial product.
Second-order effects
Rivals moved to capture displaced users and to guarantee rebuildability: SUSE committed $10M to a hard fork of RHEL, and Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ launched OpenELA and then released its full source as a vendor-neutral counterweight.
Oracle gains a wedge against Red Hat in enterprise accounts by backing an association whose stated purpose is sustaining RHEL-based alternatives.
Third-order effects
Enterprise Linux is structurally splitting into two camps — a vendor-controlled upstream that restricts source flow versus a coalition-funded open foundation — with procurement decisions increasingly hinging on which governance model guarantees long-term availability.
If Red Hat's compliance-verifiability stance holds while OpenELA publishes complete sources, the GPL-compliance debate shifts from individual licenses to who controls the reference source for an entire ecosystem.
The trend: Enterprise Linux is moving from a single freely-rebuildable upstream toward contested governance, with Red Hat restricting source access and Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ building institutional alternatives around it.
Oracle buys Sun: Solaris Unix, Sun servers/workstation, and MySQL went to /dev/null. IBM buys Red Hat: CentOS is going to >/dev/null. Note to self: If a big vendor such as Oracle, IBM, MS, and others buys your fav software, start the migration procedure ASAP.
Well this is unfortunate for those on CentOS 8 (non-Stream)... #CentOS 8 Ending Next Year To Focus Shift On CentOS Stream As RHEL Upstream https://www.phoronix.com/...
No more CentOS Linux (a RHEL dev branch will be called CentOS stream): https://lists.centos.org/... “If you are using CentOS Linux 8 in a production environment, and are concerned that CentOS Stream will not meet your needs, we encourage you to contact Red Hat about options.” <<$…
looks like my HPC future is gonna standardize around Ubuntu LTS with Slurm given the CentOS announcements today. IBM destroys another nice thing. CentOS changes will disrupt science and HPC but may be best in long term as CentOS moves too slow for ML/AL and dataSci user needs
I'm quite upset about the CentOS 8 announcement. This was exactly the reason I decided to go with CentOS over Ubuntu LTS. And I just migrated a lot of websites from an end of life Ubuntu server to CentOS 8! https://twitter.com/...
CentOS used to be “the” production Linux for people without the budget for RHEL. Looks like it won't be for long. I don't have to be happy about this, and right now, I'm not. Instead I'll take this opportunity to thank @CentOSProject for bringing us CentOS Linux all these years. …
I'm sure this will be well received. I'm pretty sure most people's reason for running CentOS is they were looking for an OS in perpetual beta. Like almost stable, but with a little bit of random breakage just to keep things exciting. https://blog.centos.org/...
So CentOS is officially dead. I stopped recommending it a year ago, the update gaps got way too long. Tragic, CentOS will be missed. However, there is still the free RHEL clone from Oracle. Let's hope it stays free. https://twitter.com/...