You are misinterpreting what I said. I'm not talking about someone else impersonating RHEL. Canonical has no issue with its OS out in the market. RHEL could just be free to use (with updates but without other support) if they choose. This is how it used to be before it became RHEL anyway. Hence, CentOS was created as an outsider effort. Nowadays, CentOS is half inside RH, which is why the distinction is a bit silly.

However, upon thinking a bit more, their current strategy still makes business sense since RHEL and CentOS are silos. While the sets of users that pay for support and the ones that don't are different, if they started giving updates for free, it reduces their bargaining power in general and more so when time comes to renew support. Right now, if you stop paying for support, you cannot use RHEL any more and it won't get updates.