Until recently, Alma was exactly RHEL but for free.

Now they will be CentOS which is already free.

I think it is a fair question if the new model adds value or not.

But even before this, Alma was using the same model as Rocky, Oracle, etc, weren't they?

And they are stopping this now. That is the question. Not "why do you need a RHEL copy?" (which you could have asked a year ago) but "why do you need a RHEL mostly but not quite copy?"

Right, and surely there's strictly more value in having a slightly different copy of RHEL than an identical copy of Rocky etc, since now there are strictly more use cases that are being addressed?

Surely not.

You now have much less supply for a common use case, but additional supply for a "new one".