The statement on that page that I find most bothersome:
If we want to see the world of open source software grow, we should encourage users to pay for its development; otherwise it’ll be underfunded or developers will have to resort to backdoor deals and advertising. And nobody wants that future.
There really are distros that have a business model which isn't shady. It's a lot of work to do something like have a free version and an enterprise version, you have to do boring things like sell and market and support, but those sorts of things don't represent some kind of Open Source apocalypse.
There are even distros that have a business model of asking for donations without being all passive-aggressive about it...
"We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software."
And like, they have this on their home page:
"100% Free elementary OS is completely free, both in terms of pricing and licensing."
So it's weird to mention cheating or talk about making it harder to download for $0 while talking up the free pricing in their ad copy.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150211113458/http://blog.eleme...