The Red Hat model only worked for Red Hat

RedHat is the employer of many Linux developers, including maintainers for GNU software etc., with SuSE and Canonical distant followers (at least it used to be like that).

So I guess that makes them both a very significant contributor as well as deserved receiver of financial resources towards F/OSS. OTOH, apart from adaptions to ever-changing hardware, you could say that the times where Linux innovations are actually serving end users is long, long behind us, and anything RH pushed, such as systemd, gnome, and in particular podman (to take away from Docker ie what RH sees as their market, and theirs alone) etc. is basically zero sum software created out of a self-serving interest of selling support contracts by definition. That Linux isn't pro consumer is also evident by it being used for clouds and for a privacy-invading mobile O/S.

Linux was nice and gave a direction to a developer community as long as it was chasing commercial Unix/POSIX with strong precedents and blueprints what to implement. Now it's just an IBM division.

And in the process, a cheaper alternative to Aix.

People that weren't there in the begining don't get it that Linux only really took off around the UNIX offerings of the early 2000's, when Oracle, Compaq, Intel, IBM money started be pumped into Linux in some form.

The thing with UNIX/POSIX clones, is that there is hardly any inovation beyond adding new drivers and kernel features, as POSIX doesn't have anything else to offer.

The funny thing about Oracle haters is how they ignore that Oracle and IBM stand by Java since the early days, they collaborated with Sun on the Network Computer project, were one of the first SQL vendors to include the JRE on the database engine, provide a GUI based on Swing, JSF framework, JVM implementation, IDE, and so on.

They also ignore the fact that Sun also charged money for support, JDK was only available as free beer with source on request, the whole Apache drama with the TCK, and access to legacy versions required a Sun developer account with license.

Or that they were the ones introducing the separation of having UNIX for users, and an additional license for an UNIX SDK, which is what made people rush to improve GCC, until then mostly ignored project.

why didn't they just switch to rockylinux?

(Note: I work for Red Hat)

I'm constantly amazed that people still don't understand why Red Hat makes money, and this article won't enlighten you as it doesn't understand it as well as being full of other incidental mistakes (like their description of CentOS is way off the mark).

Red Hat takes Linux and certifies it against all kinds of government, safety, privacy etc standardards, such as PCI and FIPS and numerous local ones. As a result if you are a government or many large companies you simply cannot download Linux and YOLO it. You are legally required to use the certified software so you take the path of least resistance and buy RHEL. That's it. It's why Red Hat makes piles of money, and Canonical or your SaaS does not. Understand what your big customers are required to have and provide it to them, even though it's boring and expensive to do.