Is this the end?

[Whoever]

Given that Red Hat is now restricting access to the package sources, is this the end for CentOS, Rocky, etc.?

I would have thought that it would just take one subscription to access the sources and then they could be made public, but perhaps there is some subtlety I don't understand?

[lightman47]

You perhaps mean IBM? I've never known a single takeover (now relabelled as a "merger") that ever benefited anybody not in the "high seats" - despite the "promises made" to in order to make it happen. {I've seen a lot of them}

-just my 2 cents

[TrevorH]

I don't think it's the end as such but it's certainly clouded the future with a lot of FUD which was possibly the intention of this. Personally I think I am treating this as a sign that it's time to abandon ship and move to something that is not dependent on Red Hat for its future. Most likely Debian, possibly SuSE. Still lots more investigation to do before I decide.

I had already had many second thoughts about sticking with RHEL and its clones but after watching what has happened since the Great Betrayal of 2020, I had just got comfortable enough to start deploying el9 (Rocky) at work. I am fairly sure we will be halting that now - I have the grand total of 6 machines running el9 there and 4 of those are immediately scrappable as they are things like build hosts and testing grounds. That leaves me with a database server that is used by our developers and a system that was in use by our VoIP devs, both also easily replaceable but not something I can just turn off like the others.

[ms217]

Given that Red Hat is now restricting access to the package sources, is this the end for CentOS, Rocky, etc.?

I would have thought that it would just take one subscription to access the sources and then they could be made public, but perhaps there is some subtlety I don't understand?

Yes, one with a subscription could download thousand of packages from their portal.
I don't know their source package portal, but if it is NOT some kind of FTP then it will be a tough job to download every source package, even though alot of things could be automated these days.

In either case they have the right to cancel your subscription, if you violate against their EULA but if they would cancel the subscription is a different story though.

Generally speaking, we will know in the coming weeks what the status of the future of EL derivatives is and that hopefully next week already.

CentOS 7 support is safe until its EOL, however it can be considered already as legacy.
Oracle seems to continue pushing their updates onto their FTP servers for EL8 and EL9 and that includes even the source packages.
Looks like they still have access to Red Hats RHEL sources, probably through a individual contract?

This was also the statement of the AlmaLinux Foundation to rely on the sources of CentOS Stream and Oracle Linux.
However, how all of this will work out mid- to longterm remains sadly as a big questionmark.


This uncertainty is not good if you have a business (web/mail-hosting) that relies on a solid distribution that RHEL (or derivative) is/was, but also where you don't need any support contracts.

I also won't immediately replace my existing EL8 and EL9 machines. It is better to wait how things will develop but I'm considering for new machines also just like Trevor Debian or OpenSUSE as potential future OS candidates.

[Whoever]

What about Oracle Linux?

Rocky, Alma and the others don't have resources to challenge IBM in court, but Oracle does.

Can the package sources be downloaded from Oracle?

[ms217]

What about Oracle Linux?

Rocky, Alma and the others don't have resources to challenge IBM in court, but Oracle does.

Can the package sources be downloaded from Oracle?

At the moment it is still possible.
If this will change, only god knows...