Earlier quoted context omitted.
But access to the autoupdates infrastructure isn't part of that deal. If wp-engine want to change customers for access to that it's not unreasonable to expect a contribution.
Suppose I want to have a Wordpress site, and am considering the following options. 1. I create an Amazon Lightsail server set up using the Wordpress image as described here [1]. 2. I get a virtual server somewhere, install Debian, do "apt install wordpress curl apache2 mariadb-server", and configure things as described here [2]. 3. I get a shared hosting account at some place that includes cPanel or something similar…
An alternative to wp.org's infrastructure would be the likes of https://roots.io/bedrock, which uses composer to install and update plugins and themes along with wordpress itself. The infrastructure it uses is called WordPress Packagist, which is run by outlandish.com using github as the distribution infrastructure. The whole thing is open source, so you could run your own wpackagist service if you like.
Using bedrock in a container, I upgrade the site by building and uploading a new container image. Anything goes wrong, I roll back to the previous image. Cattle, not pets.