Then it wouldn’t be free as in FOSS

I had the same perception as you before I read the article, so I presume we both made the same wrong assumption. Apologies if I misunderstood your comment.

It's not suggesting anyone changes the licenses to enforce this. Instead, it suggests that the package repositories should charge companies for access. Companies that want to use a free mirror will, but many will pay for convenience of using the official repository. A cut of that money is then automatically shared to maintainers.