Navigating Changes in the Open Source Landscape

Red Hat last week made a substantial shift in its source code access policy. The implications for vendors, developers and users are significant, and the move has caused some concern within the open source community. I want to shed as much light as I can on the decision and provide reassurance to the community in general, and SUSE’s customers and partners in particular.

What has happened?

Red Hat has decided to remove public access to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code. It’s a big change in its source code access policy and this decision has caused significant concern within the open source community. That’s understandable. RHEL’s existence owes much to the collaborative efforts of many upstream projects, including the Linux kernel developed by many different contributors, among them SUSE. At the center of our world is innovating together. We are all working to build something greater than the sum of all our parts. We are all interdependent.

Upholding Open Source Values

At SUSE, the principles of open source and power of collaboration are dear to us. While changes in the open source landscape may shift dynamics, we firmly believe that the freedom to access, modify, and distribute software should remain open to all. Our commitment to customer satisfaction, stability and reliability remains unwavering. We will continue to invest in robust support infrastructure, deliver timely updates and provide a best-in-class user experience to our community users and customers.

Our Commitment to SUSE Liberty Linux Customers

SUSE helps many enterprise customers run and manage heterogeneous environments including CentOS and RHEL. Our solution for these customers is SUSE Liberty Linux. We want to reassure our customers that we remain fully committed to delivering a seamless experience for SUSE Liberty Linux. Red Hat’s decision does not change that. We will continue to collaborate with our partners in the open source community and leverage our decades of expertise to provide Red Hat binary compatible updates and security fixes going forward.

Looking Ahead

SUSE also recognizes that open source innovation thrives on collaboration, extending beyond code availability. We remain dedicated to fostering a vibrant ecosystem around the openSUSE community, with Adaptable Linux Platform and our SUSE Linux Enterprise suite, by actively engaging with industry experts, developers and partners. We are committed to strengthening the open source movement and ensuring a prosperous future for all stakeholders.

We’ll have more to share soon on how we intend to enhance our existing collaboration with the open source community to stay truly open and collaborative. It’s the best way forward, the only way forward.