SUSE has weighed in on the Red Hat controversy, setting itself apart and emphasizing its commitment to open source.

Red Hat ignited a firestorm in late June with an announcement that it would restrict access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code to paying customers. What’s more, the RHEL license prohibits sharing or re-publishing the source code, something that many are saying is a violation of the GPL. Even if it is not a violation of the letter of the law, it certainly is a violation of the spirit.

Some had wondered what stance SUSE would take since the two companies share significant similarities. Like Red Hat, SUSE sells support for an enterprise Linux distro, SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE). SUSE also relies on a community-driven distro as its upstream source, openSUSE Tumbleweed, much like Red Hat relies on Fedora. The two companies often share similar legal perspectives, with SUSE quickly following Red Hat’s lead last year when the latter disabled GPU acceleration on AMD GPUs over patent concerns.

On the issue of open source and the spirit of open source, SUSE appears to be distancing itself from Red Hat’s stance. SUSE CTO Dr. Thomas Di Giacomo penned a blog post outlining the company’s values:

Red Hat has decided to remove public access to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code. It’s a big change in its source code access policy and this decision has caused significant concern within the open source community. That’s understandable. RHEL’s existence owes much to the collaborative efforts of many upstream projects, including the Linux kernel developed by many different contributors, among them SUSE. At the center of our world is innovating together. We are all working to build something greater than the sum of all our parts. We are all interdependent.

Read More: Red Hat Continues Damage Control, Clarifies Term ‘Freeloader’

Right away, SUSE’s stance is far different from Red Hat’s. While the latter has defended the decisions it has taken in the context of its own business, Dr. Di Giacomo’s words seem to paint the picture of SUSE as a company far more concerned with the greater open source community it is a part of. Dr. Di Giacomo emphasizes the importance of users being able to access, modify, and share code — just as the GPL intended:

At SUSE, the principles of open source and power of collaboration are dear to us. While changes in the open source landscape may shift dynamics, we firmly believe that the freedom to access, modify, and distribute software should remain open to all. Our commitment to customer satisfaction, stability and reliability remains unwavering. We will continue to invest in robust support infrastructure, deliver timely updates and provide a best-in-class user experience to our community users and customers.

Dr. Di Giacomo also reassures SUSE Liberty Linux users that the company will continue to support open source principles…even in the context of the RHEL installations SUSE helps support:

SUSE helps many enterprise customers run and manage heterogeneous environments including CentOS and RHEL. Our solution for these customers is SUSE Liberty Linux. We want to reassure our customers that we remain fully committed to delivering a seamless experience for SUSE Liberty Linux. Red Hat’s decision does not change that. We will continue to collaborate with our partners in the open source community and leverage our decades of expertise to provide Red Hat binary compatible updates and security fixes going forward.

SUSE’s stand on the Red Hat controversy is a welcome endorsement of open source principles. SUSE is currently used by 60% of Fortune 500 companies (via SiliconANGLE, provides one of the most technologically advanced Linux distros, has an industry-leading focus on security, and uses the RPM package format like RHEL. With the above assurances, it would not be surprising to see many companies start switching from RHEL to SLE.