Red Hat has quietly expanded the number of entitlements in the Developer Subscription for Individuals program from 16 to 240.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Individual Developer Subscription is an initiative launched by Red Hat in February 2021, two months after the company discontinued the existence of CentOS. The goal is clear – to give CentOS users a free alternative to migrate their systems to RHEL.
After signing up in the Red Hat Customer Portal, the program allows you to freely download, install, and register Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Then you can freely use it and receive updates for it.
The Red Hat Developer Subscription for Individuals is a single subscription, which allows the user to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a maximum of 16 systems, physical or virtual, regardless of system facts and size. Those 16 nodes may be used by the individual developer for demos, prototyping, QA, small production uses, and cloud access.
The emphasis in the above text is on the number 16. In other words, you can register for free up to 16 RHEL systems, either virtual or physical. Although this amount is enough for practically any home user, more is needed in larger clustered environments.
These days, Red Hat drastically upped that figure from 16 to an impressive 240 systems, with no official statement yet. A quick check of the Red Hat Customer Portal shows this.
At first glance, this is great. It is worth noting, however, that this occurred just days after Red Hat decided to limit public access to its source code, putting doubt on the future of the two most popular RHEL clones, Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux.
Coincidence or not, we can’t help but mention that one of the most logical conclusions from this action is that Red Hat is trying to limit the popularity of the two RHEL replacements by allowing customers with more extensive IT infrastructures to switch to RHEL for free with those up to 240 systems.
Updated (June 27): As we have just been informed, it is a bug in the Red Hat Customer Portal, and 240 does not correspond to the actual number of allowed systems to use, which remains 16. More information about this – here.
It’s likely just a bug. It’s now back at 16 and RedHat has posted no news on such a change.
The problem is RH (or IBM). After the actions they have shown in recent years, they cannot be trusted at all
Then can offer anything now. I dont feel redhat is reliable. After the last news from them, i cannot be sure they Will not change their polítics as company and make any inversión involving their ecosystem useless.