AlmaLinux announces future plans to reponse Redhat restrictions

AlmaLinux announces future plans to reponse Redhat restrictions

AlmaLinux announces future plans to reponse Redhat restrictions

AlmaLinux is a clone based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) created by the CloudLinux company.

AlmaLinux was established after Red Hat decided to stop developing CentOS (non-Stream version), its development began in December 2020, and the first official version was released in March 2021.

AlmaLinux uses RHEL 8 as its foundation, and AlmaLinux’s source code is fully compatible with RHEL, which means that users can run on AlmaLinux all applications and tools that run on RHEL.

Red Hat issued an announcement yesterday that it will restrict access to the RHEL source code, and in the future CentOS Stream will become the only repository for public RHEL-related source code releases.

For Red Hat customers and partners, source code remains available through the Red Hat Customer Portal under their subscription agreements.

After the incident, AlmaLinux immediately stated on social platforms that it would study the impact of this change on them. After a day of research, they issued a statement announcing some plans for the future.

Yesterday, Red Hat announced a huge shift affecting all rebuilds and branches of RHEL. Going forward Red Hat will only distribute the source code for RHEL RPMs in its Red Hat Customer Portal.

This again wreaks havoc on the entire Red Hat ecosystem as all RHEL clones depend on the source code being released.

In fact, AlmaLinux noticed something unusual before Red Hat made this change. During the last week, AlmaLinux discovered that some updates for Red Hat 8 were not being released on git.centos.org as usual.

They initially thought it was a bug and filed a report with Red Hat, but the issue has never been resolved. It wasn’t until they saw an announcement from Red Hat that they got an answer.

This change means that we, as builders of RHEL clones, are now responsible for adhering to the licenses and agreements surrounding the Red Hat interface, in addition to those contained in the software sources.

Unfortunately, Red Hat’s User Interface Agreements, as we understand them today, state that redistribution of resources obtained through the Red Hat Customer Portal would violate those agreements. This means we need a new solution.

In the short term, their plan is to pull CentOS Stream and Oracle Linux updates to ensure that AlmaLinux receives continuous security patches.

This ensures that they are 1:1 compatible with RHEL while not violating Red Hat’s license. But in the long run, they will find a suitable development path together with other RHEL downstream products and partners.