The hand feeding them is the cross-pollination of community clones to paid subscriptions. RedHat would have never grown as big as it has if it didn’t have the backing of people who learned how to use it, and enterprises who built things to run on it. We use Rocky because it allows us to rapidly test ideas without having to deal with licensing issues. When we are ready to deploy, we use RHEL so we can leverage the paid support. I myself only learned RedHat systems because CentOS was free and had a vibrant community. They have killed off CentOS and are now playing games with community distros, removing that onramp for learners and potential paying customers.

Moving distros is an issue primarily due to the differences between them for configuration and compliance, but it is a cost that comes once. If they continue to squeeze customers, those who can move will.