Even if their OS is nothing but Ubuntu + Pantheon wrapped in a fancy cover how does that make them 'wrong' for asking money for their efforts? How exactly is this different from someone making a fancy HTML5 bootstrap based template for wordpress and then charging money for it? Clearly the number of man-hours gone into making that template is nothing compared to the effort spent on bootstrap and wordpress - which are both free and open-source.
Lastly, concluding that asking money for your work (alongside providing free downloads) is akin to 'they are only in for the money' affirms my fears that I cannot even dream of living off of any open source software that I make.
I don't think it's wrong to "ask" for money, but it does seem wrong to state that paying $0 is "cheating the system". The implication is that if you choose to pay $0, you're doing something devious or unethical.
> make them 'wrong' for asking money for their efforts?
It's wrong in the sense that they make it look they are making you pay for the OS, while they don't take care of the OS actually, and they don't give back money to those who make the OS in the first place which is the cornerstone of the cathedral.
It would be way more honest if they were simply selling the binary for Pantheon and charging only for that (close the a HTML5 template in that sense that it's separated from the base install).
I'm not against charging for your work, I'm against the attitude of entitlement they have as if they were responsible for the whole thing in the first place.
Lastly, concluding that asking money for your work (alongside providing free downloads) is akin to 'they are only in for the money' affirms my fears that I cannot even dream of living off of any open source software that I make.