About Oracle as alternative. Oracle Linux is not an alternative to CentOS but for RHEL and if I will force to pay for enteprise system currently I will pay RHEL, not OL. Over this, OL is not the only enterprise distro that a "user" could choose. If support is needed there are SUSE (SLES) and Ubuntu. For who that don't need support there are Debian, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE (I'm talking about the most used but you know that slackware,FreeBSD are in that list), so many alternatives are in place.
I think it's particularly disappointing *if* this is a "policy" from RH since the other major RHEL clone, Scientific Linux, has not produced an EL8 offering in favour of using CentOS.
I think all of us here understand the hugely complex process of producing a quality OS, even when it's "just" a clone of another one. The official sanctioning from RH was touted as a two-way process: community input into RHEL and RH support and help of the cloning and build process. It would be a bit underhand if it turned out that it was RH's way of creating a two tier system: buy RHEL+support and get timely updates; use CentOS for free, get security updates, but wait two months for each upgrade.
P.