I just think Yoast as a company pushed a short-sighted tactic because they could easily anticipate how many in the community would have reacted to this banner.

Still, Yoast is a company that needs to make profits and I'm all for new ways to bring new paying customers (aka pushing the premium versions of your product) as long as you don't bend the rules all other plugin devs need to abide by.

I think the reactions Yoast had to deal with, although easily foreseen, were too strong. C'mon they didn't kill anyone, geez. And the CEO — Marieke — officially said they were sorry.

Having said that, I just keep seeing these things happening both on the repo and on the dashboard, where bigger players bend the rules in their favor.

My take on it: https://www.matteoduo.com/upselling-advertising-crossselling-wordpress-org-dashboard

TL;DR: Yoast wasn't the first one doing this and it won't be the last. Why? Because it’s a flawed "environment" that sometimes is taken advantage of. When big players try to "trick it", a simple apology seems to be enough, while small/indie plugin devs get their plugin banned or temporarily removed.