Paying for services isn't philosophically incompatible with FOSS, that's how companies like RedHat broke through back in the day, but paying for "quick and high-quality security updates" strikes me as alarming. Am I to take from that that they're holding back high-quality security updates from some users? Unless maybe we're talking about extended support for EoL software.

Pro is free for 5 devices for individuals.

If you are running a business, Yes pay for pro in the same way you would have paid for windows.

Saving you a click: No.

If you want technical support, of course you do. Just because a code is open source does not mean it should be free. Developers need to eat too. Another issue is that there are distributions such as ZorinOS that charge money for the right to use a pro version, when in reality it is the same version that you can configure yourself and that ZorinOS belongs to a company, not a user community.

I mean, redhat has been a paid version and it's been around for years

I’d be happy to pay for things like Ubuntu Touch to have quickly a viable alternative to Android and iOS. It’s possible to donate, but donations tend to not be reliable or make development viable at all. Paying for Open Source seems fine, as long as fund allocation is fully transparent.

For desktop? Ubuntu is one of the worst and slowest desktop distributions; nobody should be paying for that.

If you need what they provide, I don’t see why not. It’s great to monetarily support open source. Devs need to eat too.

Seems fine, I don't see why a home/DIY user would stay on an Ubuntu LTS release for more than 5 years.

TIL as a normal Ubuntu user, you don't get quick and high-quality security updates.

I'd gladly pay, and I do support some foss projects.

However I would not pay Canonical for anything. I don't like their products or some of their practices.

Just use Debian for better security.

We have to invest time for the helpdesk. It's may be ours, or others (in paying for it). However, I think the Odoo experience show how much this economic model is an incentive to get the software as hard as possible to maintain.

Maybe we sall have many cooperatives, independents or hire people instead