CIQ takes Rocky Linux corporate with $25K price tag

Backs RHEL-compatible distro with indemnification and update guarantees

CIQ has unveiled a version of Rocky Linux backed by service level objectives and indemnities for enterprises requiring more than the support of an enthusiastic community behind an operating system.

Starting from $25,000 for an annual subscription, Rocky Linux from CIQ (RLC) retains its compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as well as its community origins, but adds service level objectives (SLOs) for CVE remediation and security updates, legal indemnification protections to deal with potential infringement claims related to open software in the distribution, and supply chain validation for packages. Support is available separately.

Gregory M Kurtzer, founder and CEO of CIQ and founder of Rocky Linux, said: "Rocky Linux from CIQ meets the needs of organizations who want to run community Rocky Linux within their IT infrastructure but need contractual guarantees and mitigation to liabilities that the open source community cannot provide. Now you can have the best of both worlds."

Rocky Linux is one of several enterprise Linux distributions to arise from Red Hat's decision to change the focus of CentOS – a community build of RHEL – to a development branch of RHEL, thus making it unsuitable for production workloads. A 2023 decision to stop making RHEL source code available to non-customers compounded the issue and resulted in the formation of the Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA).

At the time, Kurtzer said: "With OpenELA, CIQ, Oracle, and SUSE join forces with the open source community to ensure a stable and resilient future for both upstream and downstream communities to leverage Enterprise Linux."

Another RHEL-compatible distribution available to enterprises is AlmaLinux, although its community-driven nature might give administrators pause. That said, the organization readily directs users to companies that can provide commercial support for the product, backed by service level agreements (SLAs).

CIQ's introduction of RLC is at once reassuring for enterprises looking for RHEL and CentOS alternatives – CentOS 7 moved out of maintenance support in June 2024, although SUSE will keep the lights on a little longer – and a further sign of the fragmentation of the enterprise Linux world following Red Hat's decisions.

However, for administrators who have gone down the Rocky Linux path, the arrival of RLC will provide both compliance and comfort – at a cost. ®