There is nothing unethical in having a commercial contract with your users whereby they pay for the features you implement. The typical ways this is done leads to unethical outcomes (lock-in, secret source etc. etc.) but by itself a commercial contract between willing and informed adults that don't harm people around them is not unethical.
The extremist stance "free as in beer from day 1" is an ideology that, it should have become clear by now, is actually hurting the freedom of the public at large, who is pushed into proprietary cages set up by ruthless profit-maximizing businesses. There should be a better way where developers are paid, high quality software gets written, and users are free. There is nothing fundamental preventing such a world to exist.