Oh come on at some point, every software project or foundation needs to cover their expenses somehow or else they enshittify or cease to exist/get acquired by a dangerous, moneyed conglomerate. It’s known as the going concern principle.
Out of all of the projects that I can think of in recent memory that started as big open source useful things, only VLC Media Player managed to avoid turning into garbage, and it’s because the lead developer is a saint.
You can avoid Ubuntu because they have a paid plan and that’s your prerogative, but imagine they got bought out by Apple or something.
There used to be punishments for bakers adulterating flour to make profits; medieval communities were so reliant on the bread that the Lords went out of their way to regulate bakeries and ensure high wages for bakers to prevent that from happening (i.e: Adding chalk).