Politics/commentary on the sanctions themselves aside, I do not know why the author keeps harping so strongly on the fact that it was a "FREE" service. The cost

Politics/commentary on the sanctions themselves aside, I do not know why the author keeps harping so strongly on the fact that it was a "FREE" service. The cost of the service/product is irrelevant. You are still doing business with a company by using their product even if you aren't explicitly giving them currency. It's also entirely irrelevant because the purpose of the sanctions has nothing to do with restricting GitHub's revenue, but instead is supposed to restrict the sanctioned user's ability to use that service, which is exactly what's happening here, "free" or not.