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SUSE demonstrates a serious commitment to Linux in the enterprise sector, defying Red Hat's displeasure with the OpenELA initiative and offering support to users of CentOS, the operating system nearing the end of its life cycle.
Despite the company's efforts to promote updates to Rancher, attention is focused on the Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA). Thomas Di Giacomo, CTO of SUSE, speaking at the Kubecon North American event, explained the motivation behind this move: " We believe in open source and making software available to everyone. We could have done it ourselves; we know how to manage Enterprise Linux... But from the beginning, we wanted more than just one company. "
SUSE is one of the three main companies, along with CIQ and Oracle, behind OpenELA. This association was formed after Red Hat's decision to restrict access to the source code. (We discussed this here: Red Hat deals a severe blow to downstream versions of RHEL .)
“ OpenELA doesn't provide the binary, but the source code. You still have to download and build your own Linux—customize your own Linux… ” explains Di Giacomo.
The trio represents an unusual combination. SUSE, a veteran Linux vendor, has gone through several changes in recent years. Di Giacomo announced that the company will be taken completely private in the next two weeks.
CIQ and its Rocky Linux distribution emerged after Red Hat's decision to drop CentOS in favor of CentOS Stream. Oracle, however, finds itself in an unusual position as a defender of Linux, despite some less friendly licensing practices for other products.
Di Giacomo states:
It's working well. The main motivation is the same: to provide the source code to everyone. OpenELA does not provide the binary; provides the source code. Oracle will take the source code from OpenELA to create Oracle Linux. CIQ for Rocky, potentially. SUSE will use it to create SUSE Liberty distributions…
But doesn't this waste SUSE's resources? Di Giacomo doesn't think so. The company is adding enterprise support options for CentOS 7, which is nearing the end of support. " The reality is that the CentOS ecosystem dominates the world. We have customers and communities that will be in a difficult situation in 2024. And we can help... we are helping the community and customers with CentOS 7. We can provide patches and security fixes. "
Their altruism has limits. While CIQ recently announced a collaboration with Google Cloud to migrate CentOS orphans to Rocky Linux, SUSE will continue to support CentOS 7 installations for a fee.
Di Giacomo did not specify how long the support will continue. “ We can do it for many years. We need to finalize this, but at least two or three years to give people time to decide. Companies have businesses to run and shouldn't have to make these decisions. ”
While the 2024 end-of-support date has been known for some time, a well-managed IT department should have plans to address it. And the cost? Di Giacomo says, " To be determined... but tomorrow they won't be able to get what they used to get for free. " He did, however, say that prices won't be so high as to make switching to SLES a better bet.
We asked Red Hat for its opinion on all this and will update if the company responds.
Di Giacomo observes that, while much of today's innovation has its roots in open source, " The business model side of things is very different. " Speaking about startups and licensing changes, he says, " I can understand why some of them do what they do. They have to survive, pay people, give back to VCs [venture capitalists]. It's not a good time... except with AI. Then you get more money from VCs! But that's the only way to get money from VCs today! "
Like other tech veterans, Di Giacomo stresses that it's critical to decide on a business plan and monetization strategy early on, rather than waiting to see what happens with adoption and then arbitrarily deciding what might make it into a commercial release and what remain open source.
He says: “ You have to think about it from day one. Not at the end of the process. ”
No company is prevented from changing its license, but Di Giacomo warns that it must be careful not to run into potential pitfalls: “ You lose the trust of your customers, potentially the community, and you lose adoption, leaving you with nothing. ”
“ And the beauty of open source is that if the community or customers don't like it, they can fork it and do something else. ”
CentOS support and migration to updated versions of RHEL, AlmaLinux, RockyLinux or SUSE
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