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LE and Debian, two projects I use and appreciate, are free as in beer, but you're allowed to donate [1] [2]. Mirrors run for example on a university. In the end, it is all paid somehow. Perhaps by altruistic people, perhaps by public funding, perhaps by government funding, perhaps by donations (with a nice mention, aka advertising), perhaps by private money... but its paid for somehow. You mention air and trees. If we don't pump money into the quality of our air and in trees (to offset Co2 production) we are doomed. You mention COVID-19 vaccines. Who do you think pays for it if its free? All of us who pay our taxes do ie. society. If you pay for something, you have in some circumstances a stronger legal ground than when its free. I have all too often witnessed free products where, when I give feedback/criticism, I get the reply "..its free /care don't moan". If I pay for it, this argument doesn't hold, and you can hold them legally accountable in some situations. Its also not as if e-mail is expensive. I pay my ISP for it, and I get to pick a domain (all included with my sub, but guess what it isn't free...). I can move from that domain if I desire. There's also something like Posteo which costs 1 EUR a month or so, and then there's Protonmail (which I personally don't like cause of JavaScript webmail but YMMV). The reference "if its free, you're the product" is a great rule of thumb on the WWW, as it raises awareness on an important issue. I wish more people realize it because all too many people have no idea what exactly is being harvested about them. Which is a shame. It also makes it more difficult for commercial products to compete. And, if I take for example two local research news sources which I like (De Correspondent and Follow The Money) then these are paid for; not free as in beer. Yet, they compete with free as in beer. Which isn't free as in beer. Every time you use YouTube or Facebook you pay, with your privacy. What I foresaw long before it got the standard quo was that we get a divide in world-wide society: those who pay with money, and those who pay with privacy. You can already see it very clearly in the mobile world of iOS and Android. [1] https://www.debian.org/donations [2] https://letsencrypt.org/donate/ |