This article conflates multiple issues:

Paying for hosting costs seems straightforward. Sonatype has decided to host Maven Central and treat it effectively as a marketing expense, and they are free to change that if they want. Same for the hosts of PyPi, RubyGems, etc.

Developer labor is a separate issue and what most people (including the article author) seem most confused about. Open source developers generally fall into one of a few different categories: Hobbyists looking for enjoyment, aspiring professionals looking for experience, startups looking for exposure and adoption, and corporate employees maintaining software their business relies on.

Contributors to vast majority of usable software fall into the last category, yet all of the focus is on the subset of people in the first category that attract a userbase that is meaningful enough to theoretically warrant some support, which is probably the smallest faction of open source developers by a large margin.

I do not understand the angst over this. If a hobbyist gets tired of their hobby, they are free to move on. If they feel exploited by some big corporation, change the license going forward, make the repo private, push harder for compensation until they feel properly compensated, or take whatever other action resolves their internal issue.

All the other categories of developer are fine as is, and the dissatisfied category could be as well if they took more agency over the situation.