[barking]

>If your ongoing work is not worth anything, why should you be paid extra for work you did in the past?

If you write a piece of software that took you a year to write but buyers are only willing to pay $500 for then do (A) live on $500 or (b) try to sell to many buyers including some in the future? You seem to be saying (b) is out of the question but if it is who will write the software these people wish to buy?

[vertex-four]

You can find multiple buyers before you write the software, you know - you don't have to have just one person paying you. If it's consumer software, things like Kickstarter or Patreon are how this is often done - if it's b2b, this is how a lot of software development is done anyway. Examples of software successfully funded via crowdfunding include Spine, Magit, and Diaspora - although Spine appears to be closed-source anyway. You can write an MVP, pitch it to potential clients, and write software that provides value to them. That's what I'm doing.

[barking]

But planning/hoping to sell copies in the future is unethical, is it?

[vertex-four]

Yes, copyright is unethical, as is closed-source distribution. Sell actual work - there's always work to be done on or around software. My project is livestreaming software, but it turns out there's plenty of folks who don't want to set up livestreaming software, they just want to pay someone for the result of having a solid branded stream - so my business model is providing them that end. If I could do it reasonably with existing software, I would, but I can't, so I'm writing software for it.

[barking]

And there's nothing to stop someone else letting you write all the code and get paid for the bit you charge for, right. In fact they could work full time on that while you have to spend time doing software updates/maintenance etc.

[vertex-four]

If I'm not making money off it, I'm going to stop writing it and find something else to do, obviously?

Being able to say "I have deep technical knowledge of this domain, proven by the fact that I literally wrote the software and can customise it to your needs" is worth something, unsurprisingly.

[barking]

How could a programmer of great ability ever become wealthy living by your ethics?

[fsflover]

Why do you think so? Purism created its products using crowdfunding, i.e. they sold their devices (and free software on them) before anyting was created.

[barking]

They're a device maker then

[fsflover]

As I mentioned above, they also write free software for their devices. The price includes it.

[barking]

Manufacturers commonly include software in their products but no one buys a Mercedes for its software.