CloudLinux has announced plans to invest $1 million annually in development and establish a community initiative around its RHEL fork intended as a safe haven for CentOS users.

With Red Hat (CentOS’s Linux parent company), shifting focus from CentOS Linux, the rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), to CentOS Stream, CloudLinux plans to make a better stable point CentOS.

CloudLinux said it will give current users a trusted, battle-tested alternative supported by a governing board from members of the community.

CloudLinux is sponsoring Project Lenix, which will create a free, open-source, community-driven, 1:1 binary compatible fork of RHEL 8 (and future releases).

According to CloudLinux, it will provide an uninterrupted way to convert existing CentOS servers with absolutely zero downtime. Entire server fleets will be able to be converted with a single command with no reinstallation and no reboots required.

The name of the open source software will be decided by the project governing body.

The CloudLinux team has more than 450 combined years working with Linux with more than 200,000 product installations and 4,000 customers that include Liquid Web, 1&1, and Dell.

The first software release is likely to be delivered in the Q1 of 2021.