Red Hat and the CentOS Project today said they will team up to build what they called "a new CentOS" in a bid to accelerate adoption of the free operating system. CentOS is a clone of Red Hat's most important product, compiled from the source code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It could be seen as taking paying customers away from Red Hat. Curiously the pair seem to be working together which could help both the customers who pay Red Hat for enterprise-class Linux and those who use CentOS for free.

Red Hat gives away all of its source code, it makes more than a billion dollars a year. Software subscription prices guarantee updates, patches, bug fixes, support, training, compatibility with mission-critical applications, and legal protection from patent trolls that target open source users. Now it seems that CentOS is part of the Red Hat family. Fedora, another Red Hat-sponsored community project and operating system, will continue to provide the code future RHEL and CentOS releases are based upon.

With Red Hat's contributions and investment, the CentOS Project will be able to expand and accelerate, serving the needs of community members who require different or faster-moving components layered on top of CentOS, expanding on existing efforts to collaborate with open source projects such as OpenStack, RDO, Gluster, OpenShift Origin, and oVirt.

CentOS Project Leader Karanbir Singh said that the CentOS Linux platform itself isn't changing, but that "the process and methods built up around the platform however are going to become more open, more inclusive, and transparent."

Singh and several other core members of the CentOS team are joining Red Hat, "operating out of the Red Hat Open Source and Standards team in the CTO's Office.”