[vetinari]

You would be surprised.

Alpine as a base image is perfectly fine; it is a tiny base system after all.

RH base image is also relatively small (compared to full RHEL system). It is also completely useless, as you cannot dnf install anything while building the image, if you do not have access to RHEL repos. If you have to bring in your own packages, you might use Alpine just as well.

I woould also contest your claim about "happily pay". No, the payment goes after the sales folks do their job, which isn't easy either. There's nothing "happily" about it.