I have been vaugely following this and I am likely going to get it in the neck here, but this seems to be people are upset that they can no longer run their commerical business on something for free, as the other business providing the free thing were getting nothing in return, so they want to change it so that at least get something back in return (which is still not monetary, but help fixng bugs).
Well, RHEL consists of open source software. While not all of that software is copyleft, it has AFAIK always been part of the reality and the very premise of Red Hat that someone else can take that, too.
If a community project itself stopped providing what it has been providing for free, people would probably be disappointed if they had started relying on what was provided. They might also become wary of relying on community-supported projects. But they would probably not be upset in the sense of being angry. Most people wouldn't feel entitled enough for that.
I think what makes people upset in this case is that Red Hat sort of adopted the project, giving it a home, and then stopping to provide what that project had been providing for people outside of Red Hat.
I have no problem with companies saying “if you want this, you have to pay”. I have a problem with a company saying “It will be free, with full security updates until 2029” ( https://archive.is/7Qmtw ) then turning around and saying “Just kidding, it’s only going to be supported until the end of 2021”.
Pretty much. I see CentOS on tons of commercial virtual and network appliances in enterprise environments that bring in a lot of revenue, but Red Hat doesn't see any of it. I'm not shocked if Red Hat sees little value in powering major commercial distributions for free.
