Red Hat Now Limiting RHEL Sources To CentOS Stream

Red Hat announced today that CentOS Stream will now be the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases.

In a move likely to alienate some Linux community users and developers, Red Hat has decided CentOS Stream will be the sole repository for public Red Hat Enterprise Linux related source code. Paying Red Hat customers will still have access to the proper RHEL sources via the Red Hat Customer Portal.

By limiting the RHEL public sources to CentOS Stream, it will now be more difficult for community/off-shoot enterprise Linux distributions like Alma Linux, Rocky Linux, Oracle Linux, etc, to provide 1:1 binary compatible builds against given RHEL releases.

Red Hat wrote today in a blog post:

"As the CentOS Stream community grows and the enterprise software world tackles new dynamics, we want to sharpen our focus on CentOS Stream as the backbone of enterprise Linux innovation. We are continuing our investment in and increasing our commitment to CentOS Stream. CentOS Stream will now be the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases. For Red Hat customers and partners, source code will remain available via the Red Hat Customer Portal.

To be clear, this change does not signify any changes to the CentOS Project, CentOS Stream or source availability for CentOS Stream or CentOS SIGs."

This is another move following the prior CentOS shake-up that will rattle some in the open-source world with Red Hat continuing to shift greater focus on CentOS Stream as the upstream RHEL and catering RHEL more explicitly towards their paying customers.

Meanwhile Red Hat engineers are also working on CentOS Stream 10 getting underway as the basis toward the future Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.