What is this supposed to be? SUSE responding to Red Hat obstructing RHEL clones by creating a new RHEL clone? Or are they forking RHEL into something that will try to remain compatible, while not being a clone?

The latter is what Red Hat seems to want: a broader ecosystem that competes with Debian on community, while allowing Red Hat to sell RHEL with an "original recipe" sticker.

SUSE coming out with an announcement that effectively cannibalizes its existing enterprise distribution kind of makes Red Hat's move look risky, but perhaps not dumb after all.