You are correct, nothing was taken away. It is a different structure than any other distro where: A. Packages just get updates. B. The official repos are entir

You are correct, nothing was taken away. It is a different structure than any other distro where: A. Packages just get updates. B. The official repos are entirely supported but smaller. Ubuntu does the weird split of "It is official but we don't support it". And now that they monetized it you are in a situation where its easy to install something, because they offer it, and then later they hold an update hostage.