You are correct, CentOS is still downstream from RHEL, whereas CentOS Stream is just ahead of RHEL.

Luckily rocky linux will take it’s place downstream from RHEL also aiming for bug-for-bug compatibility. and with one the original creators behind it the future is looking solid. I’ve replaced our CentOS instances at work with rocky linux and it’s essentially the same.

edit: I completely missed that RHEL is going closed source and thought this was about CentOS stream. This means rocky (or relatives) won’t actually be a solution for you as can only compile from the stream branch.

Does IBM really have to ruin everything it touches?