Why Fork RHEL – Vojtech Pavlik, SUSE

This is Techstrong tv. Hi everybody. I have the great pleasure being joined by Vojtech Pavlik, who is GM of Business, critical Linux at suse.

Welcome. Hello. Glad to be here with you.

Good to be talking with you. I have a long list of things I'd love to chat with you about. One of them is about the course of the recent, uh, announcement around suse forking Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Right? Um, of course there's been interesting history with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Sent OS and, and, uh, that, that being kind of taken over by Red Hat earlier on, and some of the controversy, maybe outcomes of that. All that to say is sort of background.

Um, we're really, well, tell us what the announcement was and then let's talk about what, why SUSE did this and maybe where we're going. Right? So, so the announcement is, is rather simple.

SUSE is, um, well, let's say committing to be willing to invest, uh, some amount of money engineering time resources into creating a fork of the existing, uh, RHEL nine code base and maintain it going forward. So, and releasing the sources, right? Um, so, so that, that's what it is.

Uh, now of course, the next question I expect from you is, is really why, right? What, what is it in it for suse? Um, and it's not entirely straightforward because, uh, us just releasing the source code, um, making it available to the community, um, does not necessarily will bring money to the company.

Uh, but still, uh, we had have, we have had a philosophy for, for, uh, well, the longest time of really doing everything openly and actually sharing, making sure that we are a proper open source citizen. Uh, couple years ago, you have probably heard, uh, at SUSE Con, uh, the open, open message, right? Being the open, open source company.

Uh, and so we are seeing that, uh, that Red Hat has, has done something that actually is, is hurting not just the community, but um, also it hass own customers. Uh, when, when you're a customer, uh, the, the, the great privilege if you're using open source software is that you do not have just to trust your software provider, um, blindly, you can actually use a source code, uh, to look at the code and to validate that the binders that you are getting are actually what is supposed to be, uh, supposed to be there, right? That there is, uh, nothing, nothing secret as nothing hidden.

It's exactly the software that you are intending to run. Uh, however, Linux is so large today and, uh, our own releases, uh, are approximately 1 billion lines of code, uh, give or take a couple hundred million. So it's, it's fairly large to, to, for, for one customer to validate anything, right?

So it is actually quite important that this source is shareable, uh, between customers, between users, between the communities, such that there is more eyeballs on the source code, uh, such that if something would sneak in, somebody would notice and actually like, ring the bell. This is, this is not fine. And that's how the trust gets built, right?

That's, that's how the trust in a component, uh, that pretty much the whole world today depends on which is the operating system. Linux operating system is built and, and this is being undermined, and, uh, SUSE simply feels quite strongly about that and, and has decided, well, all these people that are currently running, uh, Rocky or, or Alma or Scientific Linux, or Euro Linux, or any, uh, of the whole plethora of, uh, Linux that are derived from Red Hat, uh, are being, are getting cut off. So we are a company that actually is doing just this stuff.

It's, it's businesses built on maintaining long-term Linux code bases. So this is what we can do for the community and actually release the source code and continue maintaining it. Well, it, it makes, it makes a lot of sense in, in several avenues, at least in my head.

And I'm curious if you can validate some of this. One is, um, I think we all operate in a world of yes, heavy use of open source and also of course, commercial products, but most customers, especially enterprises, are not just gonna use our stuff from one company, right? They're, they may be running some red ad Enterprise Linux here and a lot of suse there and something else there.

You see it in your own products like with your console product and rancher and other parts of suse that, you know, will work in a, in a multi-vendor environment. And in one way, you don't want your customers, if, if you feel they're being undermined with what's happening in Red Hat Lennox today, um, you don't want them to be enterprised in that and kinda dragging down that part of the, the customer's business while you're working with them to, to help progress in other areas that kind of shores that up. Is that, is that a little bit of the motivation, or am I reading too much into it?

Well, um, in the end, right, SUSE has been able to, uh, support our customers with a, with mixed environments over time. Uh, you have probably seen also our Liberty product, which is, uh, a support offering for, uh, red Hat and Red Hat derived, uh, distributions. Uh, we always prefer if our customers move over to, uh, the suse product, right?

Due to sles suse Enterprise Server, and its derivatives, uh, because we simply believe in this product. It is, it is something that we have created and we have a lot of trust that it performs and is stable, uh, the way we understand it. Uh, and actually we always believe it's better than the competition, obviously.

Mm-hmm. Um, but in the end, it is all about the customer being able to run and, and SUSE's value, uh, to the customer is not necessarily in the software itself, but in the customer being able to run their mission critical services, um, such that they support their business. So if, uh, we have a customer that actually is using a mixture of things, including, um, these derived distributions, well then they would be partially left dry at the moment, right?

So in that, in that, uh, aspect, it also helps them. Mm-hmm. Very good.

Um, so you mentioned making some investment in this. I think the announcement was 10 million. Um, what are, what, are there some areas where with the, where the Red Hat Enterprise links for that you felt has fallen down?

You want to kind of short back up? Are there new areas you want to take it? What, what do you see that investment being applied to?

It's More about, well, red Hat basically dropping the ball here, us picking it up, right. Uh, when it comes to providing those sources, um, I have to simply admit, um, that it is a lot of work. It is a huge amount of work to actually take and maintain long-term, a Linux code basis.

I already mentioned the number of lines. Um, the 10 million is just about enough, uh, to make that happen. Mm-hmm.

We will be potentially making improvements, but we will not be intending to make any, uh, improvements that are going beyond compatibility because that would, uh, destroy the, the value of it, right? The value is that customers can continue running what they're running, uh, potentially get support from it from a multitude of vendors. And we are also hoping that, uh, we attract a community, uh, from the other vendors, uh, and users to actually contribute back to the code base.

So that not necessarily all the burden of maintenance needs to be, uh, has to be carried by suse, but we are willing to do it. Mm-hmm. That, that makes a lot of sense.

10 million sounds like a lot of money, but running an engineering organization and the kind of people that it takes to maintain it, that that money goes fast, right? That's, that's correct. Interesting.

Um, I'm, I'm curious, what's the reaction been? What, what have you heard from your customers or Red Hat Enterprise Lenox users? What, what kinda feedback have you gotten to?

Yeah, I have to say it was overwhelming and enthusiastic, right? They, um, the communities, uh, were quite a buzz about the announcement. Uh, people were calling our move, uh, bold and brave, um, because, well, SUSE has traditionally been actually quite conservative in, in making moves in the market.

So, uh, this is a little bit outside of our usual envelope, uh, making such an announcement. Um, and, and we already are talking to a number of players in the field to actually collaborate. I can't disclose most of them, but I have seen that we have mentioned c I q, the company behind Rocky in our press announcements.

So that's the one that, that I can talk about. Yeah, it did, it did occur to me that, uh, sort of some of the spinoffs of Enterprise, Lennox, red Hat, that some of those may, maybe there's a area for collaboration, participation, you know, with you along this. Um, how about your customers?

What are your customers saying about this? Well, uh, our slash customers, uh, that, that are well predominantly running slash they are mostly unaffected. They are, okay, yeah, fine.

Uh, the customers that are actually using mixed environments, um, and maybe using our Liberty offering, um, they see that we are going to be able to offer a stronger, uh, level of commitment to, to this code base. So that is definitely positive. Um, and for the customers that are running Red Hat today, well, maybe we will be able to offer a, um, better, um, service than what they are getting today.

So, mm-hmm. Um, that is certain an option. Well, full disclosure, I appreciate you, um, having me attend SUSE Con, uh, with you this year.

You, I didn't get a chance to talk there, but, um, fabulous. Uh, keynote talk and very interesting. Thank you.

Uh, uh, very clear that, and, and it's been for some time with SUSE of mission critical, stable, reliable, distributed, you know, enterprise grade. This is stuff that you can count on, um, and that, and that message was very much emphasized, again, continued in your talk and others. Uh, uh, is there anything you wanna say about some of the announcements or maybe directionally where you're going with, uh, with SUSE and the products?

Well, happy to. Um, obviously we were talking about, uh, s Enterprise 15, uh, which is it's most recent incarnation of service spec five. Um, it is a very, very, uh, strong and established product.

One of the interesting things about it, it may, um, sound like it's been around forever, right? It's, it's service spec five. We are doing them annually, so five years.

Um, it may sound old, uh, but the way that we are developing actually allows us to always continue enabling the latest technologies in it without actually dis disrupting the customer installations. So just carrying that forward. Um, and, and so in comparison to other distributions out there, we are actually, uh, pretty much at the forefront.

Um, yeah, very stable, very liable, ideal formation, critical workloads enabling SAP workloads. And there were a couple things that we were talking about, uh, for the immediate or near future. Uh, one quite interesting technology that SUSE is putting a lot of investment into is confidential computing.

Mm-hmm. Um, and well, I've had a techstrong tv, uh, interview just on that topic, so people can just go over there and listen why it is important. Uh, in a nutshell, it allows, uh, full separation of, uh, access to the workload versus the infrastructure.

So you can have your workload running anywhere without, uh, the provider of the instructor infrastructure having access to your data, which is, uh, pretty much groundbreaking, right? It, it can turn the, uh, a lot of can, can cause a lot of changes in the industry as a result. Mm-hmm.

Um, and the other is, uh, a much more longer term effort we've been working on for a couple years, and that's a net generational Linux platform. We are calling it alp adaptable Linux platform, which introduces containerization to the core of the operating system, uh, whilst keeping compatibility with even existing traditional applications, but better supporting container cloud native applications. On top of it, uh, we will be announcing and releasing a, uh, series of products based on al It's a platform, it's not a product yet.

It's like when you have, um, a car platform, right, uh, for a car manufacturer that then creates a number of various smaller, bigger cars based on that. We'll be doing the same with help. Um, so, um, people can try the technology with our, um, uh, releases, quarterly releases of, of tech preview.

Uh, but the first products will be, uh, coming towards the, uh, beginning of the next year based on that. Yeah. Both of those topics, the con confidential computing, and now were very fascinating.

Um, interesting just talking with folks about containerization of the os of the infrastructure, now bringing at the, the, uh, os level, the, the next level, some of the things that that's gonna let us do. And I can just kind of start to imagine, um, just even managing multiple versions of aspects of the operating system, right. That you're running on, on.

I mean, I'm sure you're gonna take it very, some very interesting directions as well, way we can have you back. I'd love to talk to you more about that as we get closer to those or, or you have those announcements. Sure.

Uh, I'll be very happy to, to jump in and, and, and describe what we are coming up with. Great Ortec, it's been, uh, fascinating. It's been a lot of fun talking with you.

Congratulations on, uh, successful release of service pack five on 15. Thank you. And, uh, we look forward to many great things from yourself and the sisa team.

So thanks for being with us today. Thank you so much for, in, uh, for inviting me, and I'm looking forward for, to more interviews in the future. You bet.