@donnacha | WordSkill - The reasons you outlined in your comment are precisely why I am no longer in support of a commercial plugin area on the repository, at least not if it followed the same model that was used with the commercial theme area.

Although I will say that just because you have a free plugin in the repository does not necessarily mean you have contributed far more to the WordPess community than someone that releases a commercial plugin. Thats a broad generalization and it's certainly not the case in every situation.