The real loophole is enforcement. There's no case law that allows an end user to get standing for GPL software, only the copyright holder can enforce the license.
And this same GPL allows them to further distribute the software to third parties. If you're threatening and intimidating people not to do so, you're subverting the terms of the license.
So, the GPL is mostly worth nothing.
Imagine for a moment that you're an indie developer and you contract with a company to supply support for a GPL'ed program under the idea that they're using it internally.
Next thing you know, they're taking the code you're providing and offering a subscriber service and undermining your livelihood contracting with other companies.
OK - the GPL says they can do that. The GPL, however, does not require you to keep doing business with them. So, next contract opportunity you refuse to do business with them.
The GPL does not obligate you to re-up with them. Nor should the GPL force Red Hat to supply future updates to customers that threaten its business.
Just because people have become accustomed to Red Hat doing more than it has to do doesn't mean they're perpetually obligated to live up to those expectations.
It just shows that the correct fix isn't some dumb clause that just says "this thing that Redhat did is now forbidden."
A cleverer fix might be to require that the source code be made publicly available.
Rules for thee but not for me? What's the boundary for company size that forces public release of code vs. allowing a small company to choose its customers?
If Red Hat's customers find the situation intolerable, they can and will stop paying Red Hat and do business elsewhere. It's not, by and large, Red Hat's customers that are squawking about this - it's people who have decided they're entitled to the clones and are actively undermining Red Hat.
b) Red Hat is not threatening or intimidating anyone any more than the GPL is.
It is simply them defining under what terms you can use their product.
There's case law establishing clearly the doctrine that intended third-party beneficiaries can enforce contract provisions, and that the GPL operates as a contract and not just a bare copyright license. There is not yet case law on third-party beneficiaries under the GPL (though there is plenty of rrason to believe that end users are such under the broader case law on the topic), AFAIK, though SFC v. Vizio, currently proceeding under that theory last I saw status, may well provide it.
A license or contract is only as good as your ability to enforce it.
I also think Red Hat is complying with GPL and other licenses, just it is closer to the edge than last month.
I have never seen the source ISOs from this perspective.
However, would it not be trivial for Rocky, Alma, and Oracle to simply use "burner" developer accounts to pull the source ?
And the bit about supporting non-Red Hat software, reads as if, you promise you're not going to use Red Hat binary patches to patch Oracle Linux or some other distro, unless you're paying a subscription per instance of said distro.
There's really no restriction in this article about distributing the source itself.
Red Hat may be happy for this confusion to remain.
Defeats the whole purpose, definitely a loophole.