No doubt there's a disconnect between Mark/Canonical's stance now vs 8 years ago. But I'm curious how Canonical's (current) stance on redistribution differs much than RedHat's here? AIUI, you can't even get access to RHEL's certified binaries/beer without paying for a license. Is it simply Canonical's ambiguity on the matter the source of mjg59 and others' frustration?

I don't necessarily agree with Canonical's shift but IMHO I'm not surprised. It seems RedHat's been operating under this model since the beginning, effectively prohibiting binary derivatives and forcing complete archive rebuilds like CentOS, but without similar criticism. What am I missing?