Have you been using linux on the desktop for any period of time, mon ami? It shouldn't be a surprise why it is so popular. For a long time "it just worked" out of the box.
I've run debian, gentoo, arch, centos, freebsd for a minute, and linux mint -- mint being an ubuntu derivitive -- and only fedora and ubuntu played nicely out of the box. And of those two, only ubuntu made ndiswrapper and wifi drivers function adequately without handholding (though fedora 20 and newer are great).
If anything, I'm surprised ubuntu server is a thing. For the server I'd just slap on debian or centos and be done with it.
Deontological ethics: non-free software is bad, so making a distro that includes non-free software is bad
Consequentialist ethics: non-free software is bad, so reducing the amount of non-free software that someone uses by giving them a mostly-free distro that includes non-free software is good
There's never going to be agreement because they are using completely different frameworks for judging if an action is good or bad.
[1] Setting aside issues like NVidia drivers...
That is hardly consequential(ist). The group doesn't exactly wield much power. What influence they have is setting the bar higher so that others can get there one step at a time as you say.
It's not even the most popular distro these days. It was just hyped too much in the past, and there is still the afterglow of that.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/index.php?module=statistics&vi...
I love Ubuntu server, but some quick issues with Ubuntu desktop- Netflix needs a hard to install plugin, mouse acceleration cannot be disabled completely, unstable operating system installs that could break with a reboot or update.
Like I said, love ubuntu server, but I can't understand why Ubuntu desktop is recommended.