Pretty big difference between buying a thing that stops working if you don't have an active subscription, and using an old LTS and being given the choice of paying for extended support if you’re a corporation, signing up for a free “subscription” if you’re not, or the free upgrade to the new LTS

FTFY, it’s an even bigger difference when the extended support is free for end users.

My update told me as much. OP's likely did too. But it is usually a lot harder to manufacture outrage when you have a full picture and manufacturing outrage is the best way to get exposure on social media.

For now

Its universe, the community repo. Basically you can pay them to also supply you with community updates, a service. The official repos stay untouched.

People always want free software, but free ≠ free beer?

This. Mint is one of my favourite distros and what I started with. I had tried Ubuntu, but this was the distro that made using Linux as a daily driver possible. Now I've moved on to Debian Stable. But Mint allowed me to get into Linux and get a good understanding of the basics.

Those are community maintained packages in the first place. Canonical offers extended security updates (plus after the 5 year LTS EOL) for a fee, with 5 machines for free for non-commercial uses.

Very legit IMO

It isn't.

Ubuntu is completely free lol. This is only about the community repo. Like if RHEL would also support EPEL which they dont

Meh, how’s this different from RH?

It took Canonical about four times as long (twenty years vs five) to start doing this.

Dissatisfaction with RedHat's introduction of RHN (in 2000) was arguably a significant factor contributing to Ubuntu's rapid growth when it was first released (in 2004).