At the end of 2020 CentOS announced it would end support at the end of 2021, which sent shockwaves everywhere. I also wrote CentOS 8 Support Ends in 2021: There May Never Be a Free RHEL Again. Developers and users alike rejected it — even CentOS’s founder started the Rocky Linux project that same month to build the next CentOS.
Red Hat Changes Strategy
Red Hat was clearly rattled and adjusted immediately, publishing New Year, new Red Hat Enterprise Linux programs: Easier ways to access RHEL on the official blog on January 20, 2021. The post says they received a great deal of feedback from users and the community, with many wanting to know what the impact would be, and acknowledges the disruption caused to some users. Then it backs down, bringing low-cost and no-cost RHEL editions for individuals and small teams: free RHEL for small production workloads, where a single developer subscription can cover up to 16 systems, obtained simply by logging into an account, with an option inside the subscription to upgrade to full support.
In other words, you’ll soon be able to get free RHEL just by logging into a Red Hat account — 16 per account. Red Hat was clearly rattled.
Translation of the Original
My translation follows:
On December 8, 2020, Red Hat announced a significant change to the Enterprise Linux ecosystem: Red Hat would shift our work from CentOS Linux to CentOS Stream beginning December 31, 2021. We and the CentOS Project governing board believe CentOS Stream represents the best way to further drive Linux innovation. It will give everyone in the broader ecosystem community — including open source developers, hardware and software creators, individual contributors, and system administrators — a closer connection to the development of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform.
When we announced our intent to transition to CentOS Stream, we did so with the aim of creating a new program to address the use cases traditionally served by CentOS Linux. Since then, we’ve collected feedback from a broad, diverse and vocal CentOS Linux user base and CentOS Project community. Some had specific technical questions about deployment needs and components, while others wanted to know their options for systems already deployed or about to be deployed. We’ve been listening. We know CentOS Linux plays a variety of important roles.
This change was made because we believe the Linux development model of the past 10-plus years needs to keep pace with the evolving IT world. We recognize this is disruptive for some of you. Making hard choices for the future isn’t new to Red Hat. The introduction of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the deprecation of Red Hat Linux 20 years ago drew similar reactions. As in the past, we’re committed to making the RHEL ecosystem work well across the broadest possible community — whether individuals or organizations looking to run a stable Linux back end; community projects maintaining large CI/build systems; open source developers focused on “what’s next”; educational institutions and hardware and software vendors looking to bundle solutions; or enterprises needing a rock-solid production platform.
Today we’re sharing details of some new free and low-cost programs we’re adding to RHEL. These are the first of many new programs.
Free RHEL for small production workloads
While CentOS Linux provided a free Linux distribution, free RHEL also exists today through the Red Hat Developer program. That program’s terms were previously limited to single-machine developer use. We recognize that was a challenging limitation.
We’re expanding the Red Hat Developer program terms so that this individual RHEL development subscription can be used in production on up to 16 systems. It really is what it sounds like: free, self-supported RHEL for small production use cases. You just log in with a free Red Hat account (or single sign-on through GitHub, Twitter, Facebook and other accounts) to download RHEL and receive updates. There are no other requirements. This isn’t a sales program and no sales rep will follow up. There will be an option in the subscription to easily upgrade to full support, but that’s up to you.
You can also use the expanded Red Hat Developer program to run RHEL on major public clouds, including AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. You simply pay the regular hosting fee charged by the provider you choose; the operating system is free for both development and small production workloads.
The updated individual developer subscription for RHEL will be available by February 1, 2021.
Free RHEL for customer development teams
We recognized that the challenge with the developer program was limiting it to a single developer. We’re now expanding the Red Hat Developer program to make it easier for our customers’ development teams to join and take advantage of its benefits. These development teams can now be added to the program at no cost through the customer’s existing subscription, helping make RHEL more accessible as a development platform across the whole organization. Through this program, RHEL can also be deployed via Red Hat Cloud Access and accessed on major public clouds — including AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure — at no additional charge, paying only the usual hosting fee charged by the cloud provider you choose.
Bringing RHEL to other use cases
We know these programs don’t address every CentOS Linux use case, so we’re not done offering more ways to easily access RHEL. We’re developing a variety of other programs for additional use cases and plan another update in mid-February.
We want to make RHEL easy to consume and remove many of the barriers, working to keep pace with the evolving needs of Linux users, our customers and our partners. That requires us to continually examine our development and business models to meet those changing needs. We believe these new programs, and those that follow, will work toward that goal.
We’re making CentOS Stream the collaboration hub for RHEL, which looks like this:
Fedora Linux is where major new operating system innovations, ideas and concepts happen — essentially where the next major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is born.
CentOS Stream is the continuously delivered platform that becomes the next minor release of RHEL.
RHEL is the intelligent operating system for production workloads, used in nearly every industry worldwide — from cloud-scale deployments in mission-critical data centers and local server rooms, to public clouds, to the far edge of enterprise networks.
We’re not done with this work. We want to hear from you if your needs fall into one of the use cases described here.
Please contact us at centos-questions@redhat.com. That address goes directly to the team developing these programs. We’ve heard you, and we’ll continue to listen to your comments and suggestions.