What customers have bought is a support contract, which includes distribution of software under the GPL. What Red Hat is threatening to do is to stop allowing

What customers have bought is a support contract, which includes distribution of software under the GPL. What Red Hat is threatening to do is to stop allowing customers to renew the support contract, and stop allowing customers from buying a new support contract. The GPL does not (outside of a couple of small details for how to get access to the source) require a software distributor to provide continuing services. Otherwise you get into all sorts of strange cases, like Alice and Bob are friends working on a GPL project, Bob sends a copy to Eve, who collaborates with Bob. But Alice hates Eve, so stops working with Bob on the project. The GPL does not prevent that sort of retaliation for redistributing software. If it does, where? Why should forcing continued collaboration be part of freedoms of the GPL? Switching away from the analogy, where does the GPL say there's a difference if money is involved?