The irony of "someone should build something for free" when complaining about a donation system for helping open source projects get paid for their work.
Why would this be irony? If anything it's irony that they're offering a for profit service to facilitate donations vs adding themselves as a donor recipient on their platform.
No, the idea of having a simple payments system for open source devs to use to get paid for their "free" software should be "free". Let the merit of the software dictate. That's the whole point of open source. To build things freely and openly to make the best possible software that we (humans) can make. We should also expect the same in the tools we rely on to do that work. It's not a hard ask. It's a philosophy of not wanting a corporation to own the keys and profit from others work. Stripe already takes 2.9%+. I don't want someone else taking 10%-30%. Then I have to give the government 30%.
The "free" in FOSS is about being able to use the software as you see fit, without restrictions. Not that you don't have to pay a dime. Sure in practice the software is usually "free as in beer" but that's a side-effect, not a goal (or guarantee).
> the idea of having a simple payments system for open source devs
A payment system is never simple and if it's more than a standardized "funding.txt" format it will have running costs and someone has to cover these. How much this system should charge is debatable, but it should probably be higher than 0%.
> To build things freely and openly to make the best possible software that we (humans) can make.
This only works in a system where humans do not need money to live. This is not our system. In a capitalist system, for better or for worse, if you don't own a means of production you must work to get money because you need money to live.
We should recognize the value of work, and if it is useful, pay for it. It is only normal in such a system. I wish we were in a commons-based society, that all resources and production would be decided by workers in quantity and distributed based on needs, but that's not our system.
Have you not read the too many stories of open source developers struggling to make ends meet ? Of the gpg guy saying he might give up because it's just too much ? Of all the devs on the edge of burnout because of all the stress and the demands of people not here for participating but only for their own service ? Of the very article we're talking about ?
I would love to live in a system where everyone is actually free to do whatever they want with their time, all day long, all year long, but that's not where we live today. What kind of people has enough time and energy to devote hours of their lives to something that is not their primary way of earning money ?
I too use only FLOSS, and only put out project under copyleft licenses, but that doesn't mean I'm blind to the structures in which we live in.
