CIQ, Oracle and SUSE Unite Behind OpenELA To Take on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (zdnet.com) 18
An anonymous reader shares a report: When Mike McGrath, Red Hat's Red Hat Core Platforms vice president, announced that Red Hat was putting new restrictions on who could access Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)'s code, other Linux companies that depended on RHEL's code for their own distro releases were, in a word, unhappy. Three of them, CIQ, Oracle, and SUSE, came together to form the Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA). Their united goal was to foster "the development of distributions compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) by providing open and free enterprise Linux source code." Now, the first OpenELA code release is available.
As Thomas Di Giacomo, SUSE's chief technology and product officer, said in a statement, "We're pleased to deliver on our promise of making source code available and to continue our work together to provide choice to our customers while we ensure that Enterprise Linux source code remains freely accessible to the public." Why are they doing this? Gregory Kurtzer, CIQ's CEO, and Rocky Linux's founder, explained: "Organizations worldwide standardized on CentOS because it was freely available, followed the Enterprise Linux standard, and was well supported. After CentOS was discontinued, it left not only a gaping hole in the ecosystem but also clearly showed how the community needs to come together and do better. OpenELA is exactly that -- the community's answer to ensuring a collaborative and stable future for all professional IT departments and enterprise use cases."
As Thomas Di Giacomo, SUSE's chief technology and product officer, said in a statement, "We're pleased to deliver on our promise of making source code available and to continue our work together to provide choice to our customers while we ensure that Enterprise Linux source code remains freely accessible to the public." Why are they doing this? Gregory Kurtzer, CIQ's CEO, and Rocky Linux's founder, explained: "Organizations worldwide standardized on CentOS because it was freely available, followed the Enterprise Linux standard, and was well supported. After CentOS was discontinued, it left not only a gaping hole in the ecosystem but also clearly showed how the community needs to come together and do better. OpenELA is exactly that -- the community's answer to ensuring a collaborative and stable future for all professional IT departments and enterprise use cases."
Oracle (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Oracle (Score:3)
It's not that the licensing is restrictive, it's just designed to cause you to fail an audit.
https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Point taken, but Oracle uses Oracle Linux to build its database software for the RHEL platform.
That's a pretty strong stress test for binary compatibility by anyone's standards.
Alma Linux, a lone voice? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't believe the OpenELA's goal is 100% binary compatibility, but rather something close. They're banding together in order to standardize on an alternative. Alma doesn't need to get together since they are still aiming for 100%.
Alma? Not anymore (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
They too are diverging: https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]
This was already established when RH added those restrictions. Look at that article, it dates back to July and has nothing to do with the OpenELA being discussed here. They said back then they would no longer be One to One clone but that doesn't change their statement to be binary compatible.
Re: (Score:2)
Liam's article is complete nonsense. Alma's approach, in which they actually fix bugs that affect their users, is an *improvement* over merely rebuilding another product, not a "step down."
It's bizarre how badly wanting to defend the old CentOS process has warped some people's rational thinking.
I agree (Score:2)
Re:Alma Linux, a lone voice? (Score:4, Interesting)
Alma went out of their way to form as a formally non-profit organization.
None of the three, nor the consortium are organized, and as such I suspect it would be tricky to participate.
I actually was in a call early on with Alma and Rocky, with Alma pointing out the non-profit thing and challenging the Rocky people as to why they are explicitly organized as for-profit, and Rocky claimed it wasn't worth the trouble and wouldn't prevent shenanigans anyway.
So I could see that split being why Alma doesn't play in the same sandbox quite.
Re: (Score:2)
Likely because the group is the reason RHEL is going closed. RHEL already had problems with Oracle Linux, which like CentOS, was basically a rebranded recompilation of RHEL. Just unlike CentOS, OEL (Oracle Enterprise Li
Re: (Score:2)
>"I wonder why AlmaLinux, which is also based on RHEL, not joining this group"
I was wondering the same thing.
Alma was first out of the gate with a viable CentOS replacement, and they seem very motivated. It is a shame they are not a part of this.
Enterprise filesystems and added security... (Score:2)
It would be nice if this Linux standard could add two things which Ubuntu has, but Red Hat needs. One is TPM based LUKS encryption that is easy to set up on install, and another is an enterprise filesystem like btrfs.
Red Hat killed btrfs support in 7.x. If I wanted a filesystem that supported what btrfs or ZFS do in Red Hat, I would have to start with dm-integrity on all the individual disks for bit-rot protection. From there, md-raid, then, LUKS (you need to have disk encryption), kmod-kvdo (for dedupli
Re: (Score:2)
One is TPM based LUKS encryption
RHEL and clones have had that for a few years now... Ubuntu was actually a bit late to the party there. See clevis.
an enterprise filesystem like btrfs.
The definition of 'enterprise' might be tricky. While one might think 'enterprise' means highly capable, in many minds it would be more like "highly reliable", "well supported", and "can be fathomed by mere mortals". RH does not have btrfs devs on the payroll, so they are challenged to sincerely promise "support". Also, btrfs features make certain things like "huh, my filesystem is full and
Re: (Score:2)
Just to be snarky: If you think 'Enterprise' means 'can be fathomed by mere mortals', then you have NOT paid any attention to that term in the industry at large. Enterprise software is almost universally a massive pain in the ass requiring specialized skills to deal with, and is frequently buggy and shitty. The thing enterprise software has is a very good sales team that knows how to schmooze the c-suite.
Re: (Score:2)
True, it can vary.
Generally, if anything like "managed services" are on the table, then it's probably a big pain in the ass.
If it's something that you have support for a flat annual fee, then there's a bigger priority on "don't have them call support".
In RH, you have both. A customer hitting a problem that seems "defective" gets the benefit of non-billable support, so they want "out of the box" experience to be unlikely to cause a confused customer to seek out help. Generally in a btrfs system, something
Re: (Score:2)
Why not run Ubuntu Server?
ZFS does the right thing 99.99% of the time.
btrfs doesn't even rebuild data consistently yet. Arstechnica had a painfully deep review a year or two ago.
bcachefs might be ok for simple things soonish.