Rocky Linux is a Linux distribution developed by the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation. After Red Hat announced that it would stop developing CentOS, Gregory Kurtzer, the original founder of CentOS, announced in response to a project to continue CentOS. The name of the new project was to pay tribute to Rocky McGaugh, the early co-founder of CentOS. According to ZDNet news, Rocky Linux is now moving to the newly established Under the control of the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF).

It is worth mentioning that RESF is not a non-profit foundation, but a Delaware Public Benefits Corporation (PBC) or Type B Corp (Benefit Corporation, B Corp). Unlike non-profit businesses,Type B There are shareholders who can seek to make a profit.However, like traditional type like C,Type B A portion of its profits and resources must be used to support a specific public interest.

RESF’s Charter and Bylaws (RESF Foundation Charter & Bylaws) state that the organization’s vision is to create and foster a community of individuals and organizations dedicated to ensuring the longevity, governance, and innovation of enterprise-grade open source software that remains freely available. The community must ensure that Rocky Linux’s dependencies, source code, and build artifacts remain free, open source, and reproducible. In other words, RESF wants to make sure that Rocky Linux doesn’t go the way of CentOS.

Bylaws and Bylaws by the original 30 RESF and Rocky Linux contributorsInitial Charter MembersThe group votes to decide. The vote was procedurally approved by Kurtzer, who submitted the initial RESF PBC document. While this means that Kurtzer is the owner, legally he does not have control,Doing Sovereignty in the RESF Community. It also means that while Kurtzer’s company, CIQ, was instrumental in launching Rocky, it doesn’t have any special control or access to Rocky Linux or RESF.

As Kurtzer puts it, “Open source projects should not be influenced by corporate control or business agendas. An open source project is not successful because it has a single person behind it, or is backed by a large company; it is successful because it has many Shared support and stewardship of individuals and companies driven by shared interests. This has been our goal with Rocky Linux and RESF since day one. The RESF Constitution and Bylaws reflect our intention that neither Rocky Linux nor any RESF project be controlled, purchased or otherwise influenced by a single entity or individual.”

Heather Meeker, a professional open source attorney and venture capitalist who advised on the charter’s creation, added, “RESF takes a fresh approach to helping organizations and projects create a community home for open source projects.”

Currently, RESF only hosts Rocky Linux.