I’ve always felt guilty by taking for granted the rare breed of virtuous humans that provide free excellent software without relying on advertising. Let’s change that and pay, how much would I “lose” anyway?
Don’t feel guilty, and don’t overly lionize the virtuosity of open source developers. They’re not saints, at least none that I’ve met.
Some open source work is done by people who aren’t looking for any sort of payout. What are there motivations? They vary. Some are relying on nothing but the kindness of patrons. Some ask for donations to pad their day job salary or whatever.
Some open source work is done by salaried/indie/startup developers, where the motivation is predominantly the profit of their company, “virtuousity” being a byproduct of greater or lesser importance. This is how Apache started: several early dot-com startups joined forces to develop “a patchy server,” improving upon NCSA HTTPd. They correctly predicted that an open source model would better benefit them than closed source. Other ancillary benefits include positive PR for your company and employee recruitment.
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