Your conception of free software is not how free software is generally understood; free software is about the rights of the users, not the expectation that people contribute to it. Sure, if you _define_ free software as being about a lack of ownership by one person and expected contributions, then you can criticize this.
But what happened here is that free/open source software doesn't have a consistent stance on paying maintainers or contributors, and this author feels that it's unfair and (potentially in the midst of other personal issues, it seems?) took advantage of a problem with how the ecosystem pulls in dependencies to complain about it.
But what happened here is that free/open source software doesn't have a consistent stance on paying maintainers or contributors, and this author feels that it's unfair and (potentially in the midst of other personal issues, it seems?) took advantage of a problem with how the ecosystem pulls in dependencies to complain about it.