You only got part of the quote, and not the part that really is what the article is about.

I understand that Canonical has every right to make the decision about their product. You want to promote Snap over Deb, fine. But don’t do it in a deceiving manner.

And there is a pretty reasonable middle ground:

If you would like to keep your ‘Snap store’ deb-free, fine! At least have the decency to provide Gdebi by default for local deb file installation.