Absolutely this. Even if you've written off the cost of the licenses, you're still better off avoiding their licensing system entirely. Red Hat seems to have

Absolutely this. Even if you've written off the cost of the licenses, you're still better off avoiding their licensing system entirely. Red Hat seems to have engineered a situation where their paid product is worse than the free product, even ignoring the price tag. Red Hat's business model was to both support and profit from open source. That is not an easy path, but they were mostly successful, at least until they were swallowed by IBM. If IBM manages to destroy Red Hat's value proposition, this opens a business opportunity for a company that takes a less antagonistic approach to its customers.