As a deeper issue on "justification", here is something I wrote related to this in 2001 on the risks of non-profits engaging in self-dealing when they create artificial scarcity to enrich themselves:
https://pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html#...
"Consider this way of looking at the situation. A 501(c)3 non-profit creates a digital work which is potentially of great value to the public and of great value to others who would build on that product. They could put it on the internet at basically zero cost and let everyone have it effectively for free. Or instead, they could restrict access to that work to create an artificial scarcity by requiring people to pay for licenses before accessing the content or making derived works. If they do the latter and require money for access, the non-profit can perhaps create revenue to pay the employees of the non-profit. But since the staff probably participate in the decision making about such licensing (granted, under a board who may be all volunteer), isn't that latter choice still in a way really a form of "self-dealing" -- taking public property (the content) and using it for private gain? From that point of view, perhaps restricting access is not even legal?"
"Self-dealing might be clearer if the non-profit just got a grant, made the product, and then directly sold the work for a million dollars to Microsoft and put the money directly in the staff's pockets (who are also sometimes board members). Certainly if it was a piece of land being sold such a transaction might put people in jail. But because the content or software sales are small and generally to their mission's audience they are somehow deemed OK. The trademark-infringing non-profit-sheltered project I mention above is as I see it in large part just a way to convert some government supported PhD thesis work and ongoing R&D grants into ready cash for the developers. Such "spin-offs" are actually encouraged by most funders. And frankly if that group eventually sells their software to a movie company, say, for a million dollars, who will really bat an eyebrow or complain? (They already probably get most of their revenue from similar sales anyway -- but just one copy at a time.) But how is this really different from the self-dealing of just selling charitably-funded software directly to Microsoft and distributing a lump sum? Just because "art" is somehow involved, does this make everything all right? To be clear, I am not concerned that the developers get paid well for their work and based on technical accomplishments they probably deserve that (even if we do compete for funds in a way). What I am concerned about is the way that the proprietary process happens such that the public (including me) never gets full access to the results of the publicly-funded work (other than a few publications without substantial source)."
That said, charging to provide a service that costs money to supply (e.g. GPU compute) is not necessarily self-dealing. It is restricting the source code or using patents to create artificial scarcity around those services that could be seen that way.