You're confused.

Do you know what you pay for when you pay Red Hat? Exactly the kind of guarantees people seem to expect from free software. You're not paying for the software, you're paying for the contractual support relationship. If you're updating your RHEL server through the channels you are paying for, you'd absolutely be able to sue Red Hat if they were distributing compromised software.

The cost matters. No one's taking on legal liability free of charge.

You can't expect any guarantees of fitness for purpose, safety or whatever if you're getting something for free. The moment you pay though, things change and licenses can't absolve you from everything.

Yeah, obviously, Free Software vendors can support themselves in certain ways, chiefly being the selling of support contracts.

The people who are confused are claiming that "Free Software" is zero-cost, and you yourself contradict that belief. "Free Software" is not "free as in beer".

However, just because software is provided free of cost, doesn't mean it can't be supported, or the developers held liable. I don't see really what kind of difference that would make. I mean, other than creating an actual and direct contractual agreement between customer and distributor. If you grab a download for no money, that's obviously different than paying for a subscription, and signing a contract that includes an SLA.

But that doesn't preclude "Free as in Beer" software from having guarantees. Why should it?