[ChrisMarshallNY]

But it became industrialized by business-types. The BOFH thing was personal. They considered (still do, sometimes), users of their systems to be "the great unwashed."

Basically, pests.

Business types look at users as a resource to be exploited to make money.

Basically, livestock.

Different outlook. We try to discourage pests, but we breed and incubate livestock. In neither case, are we particularly interested in the long-term benefit to our users. If anything, the BOFH types are actually working towards the benefit of their "lusers," because that's their job.

I write software that is targeted at a demographic that I actually respect, and sincerely want to benefit with my work (so, naturally, I don't get paid for it).

I'm constantly fighting with "modern software types" that want to treat users of the software that I write as livestock. They -quite literally- can't understand my PoV.

It's fairly discouraging, really. I'm treated like an idiot, because I actually want to help the users of my software.

[jart]

The only way I see that happening is if it becomes easier to crowdsource donations. When your users are the ones putting bread on your table, they're the boss. Whatever they want they get. But sadly it's hard to crowdsource from programmers because there's so few of us. I love building and sharing software that delights my peers. Not because it's a smart thing to do. If money was the thing I cared about, then it'd be more rational to play video games on Twitch and blog about culture conflict on Substack. Rather coding is something I feel compelled to do and I won't stop even if it destroys me.