In recent weeks there has been a disturbance in the “force” of the enterprise Linux landscape, having to do with clones (no this isn't a Star Wars story…).

Red Hat has long been one of the leading enterprise vendors for the Linux operating system. The company's Red Hat Enterprise Linux (commonly known as RHEL) has been tremendously successful bringing in billions of dollars to Red Hat and its parent IBM.

Linux is open source, which means that source code should be open and shared, which is also true for Linux enterprise distributions like RHEL. The open nature has enabled a vibrant ecosystem of so-called “RHEL clones” over the years that have taken the open-source code binaries used to build RHEL and repackaged them as their own distributions. Among the many clones is Oracle Linux, which got its start in 2006.

One of the most popular community approaches was the CentOS project, which Red Hat acquired in 2014. The CentOS project underwent a series of changes in 2021 with the debut of CentOS Stream, which caused some concern by users about how it could be used as a stable enterprise platform. Those changes led to the emergence of a series of new community distributions based on RHEL, including Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux.

At the end of June, Red Hat took a step that could well end the clone era. Red Hat decided to no longer make the source code binaries for RHEL publicly available to everyone, severely limiting the ability of clone makers to have 100% compatible releases with RHEL.

The change to the public availability of RHEL binary code has led to a severe outcry from RHEL clones.

Oracle has publicly chastised the Red Hat move, arguing that it goes against core open-source ideals and that it is an effort to eliminate competitors. Oracle has pledged that it will continue to serve its own users and is committed to keeping its code binaries for Oracle Linux freely available.

Rocky Linux has also come out swinging against the move and pledged to remain alive using various methods to continue to get the RHEL source code binaries.

"Our legal advisors have reassured us that we have the right to obtain the source to any binaries we receive, ensuring that we can continue advancing Rocky Linux in line with our original intentions," Rocky Linux wrote in a statement.

AlmaLinux is also remaining committed to being RHEL compatible, as much as possible.

"We’ll be able to maintain compatibility with relative ease, but with significantly more effort involved now," Benny Vasquez, chair of the board at the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, told SDxCentral. "I know that AlmaLinux as an OS will be stronger, more secure and more stable than it has ever been in a year, no matter what drama continues to pop up."

Red Hat's move has even spurned the creation of a new clone, from rival Linux vendor SUSE. While SUSE has had its own enterprise Linux distribution for decades, it has now forked the RHEL source code to create its own clone known as SUSE Liberty Linux.

While rivals and RHEL clone makers have taken shots at Red Hat and its commitment to open source, Red Hat is shooting back.

For one, Red Hat is strongly emphasizing that it is still all about open source.

"We’ve certainly heard the feedback from the communities and the Linux ecosystem, which is a mix of understandable concern, personal opinion with a lot of misinformation, misunderstanding, and motive-questioning," Gunnar Hellekson, VP/GM of RHEL told SDxCentral. "The biggest point of clarity I can make is that Red Hat remains fully committed to open source."

Hellekson noted that for Red Hat customers, RHEL source code remains readily available through the customer portal and nothing has changed in that respect. He added that Red Hat honors and in most cases exceeds all of its open-source license obligations.

"The crux of this decision is that RHEL sources are already freely available in a variety of places," Hellekson said. "Another competitor [SUSE] recently announced that they intend to fork RHEL. This is proof that we’re adhering to the spirit of open source with freely available source code — and that’s not something we would want to see change."