A download beats a link

If someone has to be online and signed in to use the thing you gave them, you did not really give it to them.

A link is a promise that a server will still be there, still be free, and still let this particular person in. Three conditions, none of them yours to keep.

A file has none of that. It opens on a plane, it survives a company changing its pricing, and it can be pasted into whatever tool the reader already uses instead of the one you preferred. When something can reasonably be a file, it should be a file, and the file should say its format and its size before anyone taps download.

This is not an argument against links. Sources belong at the source. It is an argument about the thing you want someone to use, which should leave with them.