The organisation that builds Rocky Linux, an enterprise Linux distribution that emerged in the wake of Red Hat's decision to block availability of its source code to the public, has announced an initiative called CIQ Bridge which it describes as "a lifeline for enterprises still using CentOS Linux 7".
CentOS 7 reaches its end-of-life on 30 June. This project which produced an enterprise Linux distribution, was bought by Red Hat in 2014, but then shut down in December 2020, leaving many users angry. The distribution was basically Red Hat's Enterprise Linux without the trademarks, the only copyrighted portion.
In June 2023, Red Hat, which was bought by IBM in 2019, tightened its grip on RHEL source code, and said it would make source code available only to its customers.
CIQ said in its pitch that businesses could "gain peace of mind with up to three years of additional life for CentOS 7 beyond the official EOL, covering critical security updates for CVSS scores of 7 and above".
{loadposition sam08}And it added, "When you're ready, CIQ offers expert guidance to smoothly transition your infrastructure to CIQ-supported Rocky Linux, ensuring minimal disruption to your operations."
As iTWire reported last month, Yuriy Kohut, an engineer with the ELevate project at AlmaLinux, has already devised a plan for migration away from CentOS, beginning with version 6 itself.
The CentOS Stream, set up in December 2020 by Red Hat and which is upstream to RHEL, is now the only way to obtain source code. This source would, however, always predate the RHEL source and thus be out of date.
Red Hat's community distribution, Fedora, would be upstream to CentOS Stream which would mean it is even more outdated.
Given these restrictive actions by Red Hat, the biggest open source company, it is but natural that users of CentOS would be a little edgy as the EOL date approaches.
The CIQ statement said: "Rocky Linux emerged in 2021 as a formidable alternative to CentOS, built with enterprise-grade performance in mind. As the founding support and services partner of Rocky Linux, CIQ is uniquely positioned to provide enterprise-level support, making your migration as seamless as possible."
Apart from AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux, SUSE, the second biggest open source company, has said it would invest more than US$10 million (A$14.97 million) to fork the publicly available RHEL source code and make it available to world+dog with no restrictions.