I don’t think they’re considering it a commercial endeavor, they’re just acknowledging that complex open source projects often require paid work to effectively

I don’t think they’re considering it a commercial endeavor, they’re just acknowledging that complex open source projects often require paid work to effectively maintain and develop them. The GNU project works because it’s a bunch of small packages that are each maintained by approximately one person each for free on their spare time. LibreOffice is a complex office suite that essentially competes with a multi-billion dollar industry of complex office applications and services. It’s also an open source project that has pretty much always depended on corporate sponsorship and a paid variant rather than having some other form financial backing (e.g., it never went the Wikipedia route of being completely free for everyone and only surviving on donations).