> What's now changed is that these patches are either (a) not distributed as required by the GPL, or (b) the patches are distributed, but in a way that is inten

> What's now changed is that these patches are either (a) not distributed as required by the GPL, or (b) the patches are distributed, but in a way that is intentionally less useful, e.g. by having to get them via the Red Hat portal. This has made it more difficult for "repackagers" like CentOS, Rocky and Alma to keep their disros up to date. The situation is actually (c) - IBM RedHat is distributing the patches (and sources) as required by the GPL, but only to people who pay for their license. Re-distributing said patches or sources automatically invalidates your license, so if you exercise your GPL rights to re-distribute the GPL code you bought from IBM, you immediately lose both your support contract with them and any access to any future patches. This has meant that many companies and projects who were historically using CentOS for free have found that they either have to pay IBM to move to RHEL, or to switch to another distro. Projects like Rocky and Alma which were trying to replace CentOS are now on rather shaky grounds (though they are trying to find additional ways of surviving).