Is it not "serious" to work towards a better future because that's more difficult to obtain? There is a future out there where more industries are dominated by software that respects user freedom.

I do not believe that distros ignoring the problem of binary software distribution is actually accomplishing anything productive on that front. All it does is put a gigantic KEEP OUT sign for most outside developers who might have briefly considered porting their software. Package maintainers are also incredibly overburdened, and are often slow to update their packages even on rolling release distros.

Worse, it also inconveniences their userbase, pushing them to solutions their that bypass the distro completely such as third-party repos, Steam, Wine, Flatpak, Docker, or even running Linux in WSL. All of them function as non-free escape hatches, but all of them are inferior to distros getting their act together and deciding that binary software distribution is a problem worth collaborating on and solving together.