Open-source is an inherently radical anti-capitalist philosophy. In your eyes everyone "deserves" what the market is willing to pay, but open-source developers would rather donate their time and energy to create or contribute to something that is freely accessible to anyone and everyone. Also, believe it or not, but some people are not motivated by money, and actually derive value from the process of creating software.

The issue with rug-pulls like this is that they are deceptively masquerading with this philosophy as a calculated business strategy to adopt users. Then in this case they start using deceptive tactics like removing build files so they can continue appearing to be fully open source, even though they are violating the spirit of that term. Finally, they drop the facade when it is deemed valuable enough. Even if you are a strict capitalist, there is nothing virtuous or meritocratic about these kinds of business strategies, they rely on tricky, concealed intentions, and rightfully deserve criticism.

I'll also add that there is nothing "courageous" about deciding to extract more value from your labor at the expense of public accessibility. True courage is found in acts of selfless sacrifice.