As a long time CentOS (and prior to that, Fedora) shop, we have been taking an interest in these developments. The thing is, as a small business, one of the really appealing things about Open Source is that the friction of licensing is just not there. We could probably qualify for this program, but why would we want to have to worry about auditing ourselves to see if we needed to start paying at some point when we can just switch to Debian or one of the CentOS clones which are in the works? Not that Red Hat
You might consider a mix of RHEL-based distributions. From the commercial spectrum, these are the current options with the greatest flexibility. My advice is to try the conversion from both directions. Perhaps Rocky Linux will support such a conversion in the future.
Red Hat offers a "no support" server license for $350/year, which is the lowest licensing tier. Tiers with more capability and support are available for $800, and $1300.
Oracle has a larger range of tiers. The "no support" license is $120/year. Tiers with more capability and support are available for $500, $1200, $1400, and $2300.
Oracle Linux can be used in production without a paid license of any kind; Red Hat Linux cannot be used in this way for large deployments (excepting the new 16-seat license for a developer account).
Red Hat is aggressive with software audits; I have seen one.
Both Oracle and Red Hat now have complete toolsets to convert support between an installed CentOS/RedHat/Oracle OS.
Red Hat can now convert an installed CentOS or Oracle Linux to RHEL; previously a wipe and reinstall was required ("have fun reinstalling your system" is still on Oracle's CentOS site). The description looks much more thorough in replacing all possible packages with Red Hat versions:
Probably A No Here (Score:5, Interesting)
As a long time CentOS (and prior to that, Fedora) shop, we have been taking an interest in these developments. The thing is, as a small business, one of the really appealing things about Open Source is that the friction of licensing is just not there. We could probably qualify for this program, but why would we want to have to worry about auditing ourselves to see if we needed to start paying at some point when we can just switch to Debian or one of the CentOS clones which are in the works? Not that Red Hat
Commercial options (Score:2)
You might consider a mix of RHEL-based distributions. From the commercial spectrum, these are the current options with the greatest flexibility. My advice is to try the conversion from both directions. Perhaps Rocky Linux will support such a conversion in the future.
Red Hat offers a "no support" server license for $350/year, which is the lowest licensing tier. Tiers with more capability and support are available for $800, and $1300.
[redhat.com]https://www.redhat.com/en/stor... [redhat.com]
Oracle has a larger range of tiers. The "no support" license is $120/year. Tiers with more capability and support are available for $500, $1200, $1400, and $2300.
[oracle.com]https://www.oracle.com/linux/ [oracle.com]
Oracle Linux can be used in production without a paid license of any kind; Red Hat Linux cannot be used in this way for large deployments (excepting the new 16-seat license for a developer account).
Red Hat is aggressive with software audits; I have seen one.
Both Oracle and Red Hat now have complete toolsets to convert support between an installed CentOS/RedHat/Oracle OS.
Red Hat can now convert an installed CentOS or Oracle Linux to RHEL; previously a wipe and reinstall was required ("have fun reinstalling your system" is still on Oracle's CentOS site). The description looks much more thorough in replacing all possible packages with Red Hat versions:
[redhat.com]https://access.redhat.com/arti... [redhat.com]
Oracle does not replace CentOS or RedHat RPMs in their conversion (AFAIK), so it is much less violent on the platform changes.
[github.com]https://github.com/oracle/cent... [github.com]
[oracle.com]https://linux.oracle.com/switc... [oracle.com]
[oracle.com]https://blogs.oracle.com/linux... [oracle.com]