Not at all. The "download" we're talking about here is the binary (unless I'm mistaken).
People with $10 in their bank account and the ability to calculate the value of half an hour of their time will happily pay to avoid fighting dependencies to compile this thing from source. The angry entitled people commenting on this poor guy's blog can download the source for free.
(And to your edit, people who think that there is not $10 of value added can simply not install it.)
People tend to use Linux for mass installs, though. Once you say "it costs $10 to download this software", you have to ask "but what if I want to download it again? Or, conversely, download once but install onto 1000 PCs?"
The fully-correct-and-flexible answer is, sadly, the Microsoft-like enterprisey one: to have a user account and charge the user for a multi-seat license to the software, which provides a product key entered during the installation. That way, you can reuse the same installation image as much as you want, but each activation has a cost.
People with $10 in their bank account and the ability to calculate the value of half an hour of their time will happily pay to avoid fighting dependencies to compile this thing from source. The angry entitled people commenting on this poor guy's blog can download the source for free.
(And to your edit, people who think that there is not $10 of value added can simply not install it.)
Everybody wins.