I’d say rule 2 of lemmy.ml being broken against you is 100% justified. Go lick someone else’s boot if you don’t like people being told that “Hey, this stuff ain’t free like some of the other software you are using. Including but not limited to the fucking operating system you’re on.”
Also, get the fuck out with that capitalist mindset of required “competing” in a “market”. All of this is free and open for a reason and no one is selling you anything precisely because they have no profit incentive in mind. Linux pretty much used to be and fortunately still is it’s own thing built pretty much by the developers using it themselves, yet people like you come in requiring it to be a second Windows, like it needs to dominate the market right here, right now by adopting terrible ideas so it can “sell” better. Well I don’t want that, nor do I care for that.
I want a quality operating system that works for the user first, and not the people trying to shovel me their new fancy expensive toys. If it’s proprietary, I’d like a big fucking disclaimer the size of Arizona so I can easily tell without having to dabble. So good on flatpack. I like that.
And last, It’s not Linux that needs to grow. It’s the idea of Free Software that needs to.