Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Basically everyone who complains about proprietary/closed software and platforms and claims to "support" FOSS but never put their money where their mouths are.

Every company that pays through the nose for their cloud hosting, but does not allocate anything in their budget to support the downstream projects.

Every owner of a pricey Apple device who claims "they need something that just works" but never spared a few dollars per month to contribute to the development of free alternatives.

If a fraction of these people realized that quality free software takes money to be developed, and were willing to invest in it, the FOSS funding issue would be solved. The problem is, people are not willing to pay for R&D, they just want to pay for the finished product.



People not wanting to pay for things is a big problem in that way, yes.

But the problem is not because they're conflating it with "free as in speech". They're ignoring that aspect entirely.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: