> When CentOS moved from a direct clone of RHEL 8 to the CentOS Stream model, hordes of people raised virtual torches and pitchforks because they were no longer

> When CentOS moved from a direct clone of RHEL 8 to the CentOS Stream model, hordes of people raised virtual torches and pitchforks because they were no longer able to run a freebie RHEL clone. Many noted that this was bad for their business because of the uncertainty and having to either pay up or move to another RHEL clone. Few seemed to note that it’s bad for Red Hat’s business when people don’t pay for its flagship product, which in turn continues to fund development of RHEL. “Freebie RHEL” is an odd choice of words. It’s been literally decades since I meddled with RHEL, but CentOS as I recall it was the community response to RedHat essentially trying to cordon off a whole distribution’s worth of FOSS, and charge money for it. I am surprised to learn from Wikipedia that RH succeeded in capturing governance if CentOS sometime in the teens, and not surprised at all to see that another project, Rocky Linux, arose to take its place.