If you don't understand the value of free and open source software, you're not obligated to use it. The maintainers of Linux Mint and other Linux distributions do understand, and that is one of the reasons they have rejected Snap.

> I'm willing to bet money you haven't looked at launchpad's source code at all. Nor have you or anyone else considered operating their own.

Your assumption is wrong and you've lost the bet. Additionally, Flatpak is available and Flatpak servers are already being hosted independently:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22our%20flatpak%20repo%22

> You are not vendor locked in. You can install flatpak, install via apt, appimages etc... Canonical doesn't ban the removal of snapd from ubuntu distros.

Canonical has already transformed apt installs of Chromium into Snap installs, which motivated Linux Mint to reject Snap. Vendor lock-in is not black and white. For example, Android users can also install F-Droid or a variety of third-party app stores, but considering Google Play's default status on Android, most users are effectively locked in. The same applies to Canonical's handling of Chromium, and the Linux community is opposing this to discourage Canonical from continuing this dark pattern.

> half the fragmentation for pointless nonsense like packaging and distributions has harmed the community far more

Snap increases the fragmentation, and is more hostile to the FOSS community than all of the other options because its server is closed source.

Also, for what it's worth, I remain entirely unconvinced by your argument that this is fine from a users point of view. If they want to stop the push back, they need to ensure that they are not the only one with the ability to host a Snap store similar to how Flatpak does it. You can claim that this is irrelevant as it won't be used, and I suspect that you're right about that, but they will not be trusted until this happens.