CentOS and Red Hat are joining forces to build a new tier within the Red Hat offering that will drive innovation by adopting next-generation open source technologies.
CentOS, which is an independent and unrelated distribution, is known for providing a stable and robust enterprise-level Linux without any associated cost. The team behind CentOS takes up the open source RHEL code, replaces Red Hat artwork and imagery, builds it again and then distributes under the CentOS banner.
There is no official relationship between the two distributions; however, the mechanism opted by CentOS team has proved beneficial for both. Many enterprises consider CentOS as a sort of gateway that allows them to take up RHEL at a later date once they are ready.
Announcing the development through a mailing list announcement, Karanbir Singh, lead developer, CentOS Project, said “The CentOS Project is joining forces with Red Hat. Working as part of the Open Source and Standards team to foster rapid innovation beyond the platform into the next generation of emerging technologies.”
With this, Red Hat will now have three tiers of products: first will be Fedora for personal use; next will be CentOS for business use that will come with community support; and that last tier RHEL for business use with paid enterprise support.
