RHEL's Source Code Access Change Is Causing Issues For CentOS SIGs

It looks like the Red Hat change restricting access to RHEL sources that was announced last year is having the unintended consequence of causing some headaches for CentOS special interest group (SIG) projects.

Published last week on the CentOS blog was the Kmods SIG status update. This is the special interest group maintaining extra kernel modules for CentOS Stream and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Notable there is the note:

"Due to changes in the way Red Hat releases Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code, the Kmods SIG is currently unable to produce packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux for legal reasons. We are working with Red Hat to resolve this situation and hope to be able to provide packages for Enterprise Linux again as soon as possible."

Due to restricting access to the RHEL kernel sources among other Red Hat Enterprise Linux source packages, it's causing issues for the CentOS SIG trying to improve the kernel modules experience for RHEL (and CentOS Stream) users...

A seemingly similar kernel change was noted today by the CentOS Hyperscale SIG.This special interest group as a reminder is about enhancing CentOS Stream for large-scale infrastructure like those at Meta / Facebook, X / Twitter, and others:

"The latest version in the Hyperscale SIG is kernel 6.7.1-0.hs1 for CentOS Stream 9. This new kernel is now based on upstream Fedora release kernel rather than the CentOS/RHEL kernel tree. For the foreseeable future, the Hyperscale SIG will be tracking Fedora kernels to build and release into CentOS. The kernel is still built with a RHEL-like configuration, modulo changes for CentOS Hyperscale specifically."

So the CentOS Hyperscale SIG is now basing their fresh kernel builds on Fedora in a RHEL-like build rather than the CentOS/RHEL kernel tree.

The Hyperscale SIG also shared about their work on the latest systemd updates, new experimental GNOME and KDE workstation live media images for CentOS Stream Hyperscale 9, and other leading-edge package updates. The SIG also continues maintaining a DNF/RPM stack with Btrfs copy-on-write support.