There has been a freely downloadable Red Hat available for the past 20 years, either in the form of CentOS, or before it good old classic Red Hat Linux. That got them this far, where they are now. So you can understand how people feel bit miffed, especially now that they have Big Blue backing them they should be financially more stable than before.
I can certainly understand people being "miffed", but that was a risk when choosing to base your infrastructure on RedHat. Again the handling was extremely poor. Had they announced this new program along with the changes to CentOS, I don't think as many would have been upset.
But gambling that a for profit company will always provide you with a free alternative to they commercial offering is a calculated risk. In this case it might not have paid of.
