Can I ask - do you contribute meaningfully to any open source packages?
Do you buy software at a significant commercial level?
I've noticed this sort of total absolutest, outraged, scorched earth style sometimes comes from the free riders. At least in some businesses I've worked with - if you can eliminate customers that approach things in this way your staff are happier, your life more relaxed AND you make more money.
A customer paying $100K/year sometimes has really competent folks who have pretty reasonable perspectives - a pleasure to work with. Someone paying $20/year can just rage and rage on forums, endless support tickets for user error issues etc, no perspective in terms of what is going on. Not sure if this has been seen in broader contexts.
"the moment you even so much as assert the position of gatekeeper you're trying to create for yourselves you're dead to me."
I think Redhat did the gatekeeper to 30 billion route. If you are a customer paying for support from them might be worth giving them feedback and more importantly a suggested way forward that works to pay their staff.
What's weird is part of the value ADD for other companies in the tech space is the cloud account that you are railing against. Microsoft has basically forced it on their windows user base, but provisioning users now isn't so bad if you want to give someone office, just add their email to your admin page and entitle them. Boom, they can self solve even at home. Google has made their cloud account EXTREMELY valuable. The same "you are dead to me" ragers are often knee deep in google account / xbox account / netflix go anywhere accounts etc.