We've been doing fine here in reality, where most Linux distros, Perl's CPAN, Python's PyPi, RubyGems, etc. are all run by volunteers and donations. There is nothing special about NPM that requires it to be owned by a for-profit corporation. If Wikipedia and Archive.org can get by, I'm sure NPM can too.

Big leap from "servers cost money" to "a package manager requires a commercial entity". How are other language ecosystems and package managers operating, many without private companies attached, when they too are serving millions of requests a day?

Well the big ones are hosted by commercial enterprises, and the smaller ones don't have the scale of JavaScript so they don't require that level of support.

Which package manager has the scale of JS and isn't hosted by a commercial entity?

apt, pacman, pip, and others. You can have large scale systems that aren't dependent on a commercial entity.

I mean, the scale of pacman is miniscule compared to NPM. PyPI is hosted by AWS and Google.

Not sure how APT works in the linux community can really work for anyone else, but definitely worth a shot for sure.

Almost any other package repository is funded by donations from companies using them or a grant from an infrastructure provider.