I would disagree, but before let me acknowledge how well written article is and bread analogy is spot on. However, author complete discounted open source and ability to spin up open source software that will replicate almost 1:1 what SaaS offers without a pay-to-access requirement. Why spend thousands on integration with SaaS that you can take open source, vibe code missing features and start using? You say maintenance, but I'd argue that owning your data is more important that costs of maintenance. Like bread, when you learn and have ability to choose healthier product you never go back to store brought.
No. You should know that most software are developed for business. Free or too cheap is not good for business use. When I earn money or save money by a software, i can pay it to get full support.
This has been true for years already though - why would anyone use confluent over just running Kafka themselves, or self host sentry, elasticsearch, gitlab, mongo, databricks or grafana?