Red Hat has even been making this easier for the last few years... Back in 2003, when they discontinued Red Hat Linux (RHEL's predecessor) and locked binary RP

Red Hat has even been making this easier for the last few years... Back in 2003, when they discontinued Red Hat Linux (RHEL's predecessor) and locked binary RPMs behind a subscription (to similar outrage), the clones didn't have an easy time. RHEL's build process was behind closed doors and doing rebuilds meant reverse engineering the proper build order. This is why CentOS major versions took quite a while to appear after the corresponding RHEL releases (and made CentOS a major effort). Since Red Hat assimilated CentOS, and culminating with CentOS Stream becoming the upstream for RHEL itself, the build system became unified. This is highly valuable. That clones aren't taking advantage of this to jumpstart themselves into independence (and ensuring the Red Hat ecosystem has a future, with or without Red Hat) is just sad.