[Dalewyn]

A better analogy might be there's no such thing as a free lunch.

All those distros you mention either have commercial support (eg: Red Hat, Ubuntu) or substantial recurring donations. Someone somewhere is paying even if you specifically aren't.

[SahAssar]

Many foundational OSS projects use work and infra from universities. Many also use work and infra from companies that derive value from them. Partially I pay for it by buying things that those companies provide, partially I pay for it via taxes.

But for all people (inside or outside of the market) there is clearly a free beer (speech included) that you can use for personal or commercial use.

> Someone somewhere is paying even if you specifically aren't.

Someone is paying, but it seems like it is more towards "paying for the library" than it is "paying for a villa".

And in some cases there really isn't someone paying, there is just a person interested in the problem. That is surprisingly common in foundational OSS tech.

[uwagar]

im yet to pay a dime for mx linux and its freaking fast and awesome.

[lockhouse]

Cool, but as has been already mentioned in this thread someone is footing the bill. Even if the developers are fine with donating their time to develop and maintain it for free it still costs very real money to run servers.

[SahAssar]

And there are many people donating their time and servers. Most mirrors for for example arch are either universities or organizations that derive value from arch. Many contributors for OSS either use it as part of their work or find it fulfilling to work on it or do research with it.

That's not to say that all OSS is like this, or that all software should be ran like this but there clearly is "free beer" and "free speech" in certain places.

You might say that I pay for the universities with my taxes or the other organizations by increased prices on goods, but it clearly is offered as a free service for all, even people not paying taxes or buying their goods.

[uwagar]

dont guilt trip me (and yourself) please. u sound close like the 'dont copy that floppy' brigade. the developers of mx linux themselves are proud that they dont explicitly ask for donations. its unspoken, and anonymous giving is best. everyone else interested simply benefits and when they are benefited enough, they perhaps will contribute. everything cant be laid out in black and white and in advance. there is a strong unspoken assumption that good can result out of helping yourself and others with Free software.

[scrps]

I'd suggest perhaps donating if it is awesome.

If you can't donate there are lots of ways to help: add a feature, host a pkg repo mirror, clean up docs, fix bugs, add/manage a package, donate older hardware for compat testing, help out with community support, github issues. Telling people it is awesome also helps but maybe a more detailed why would go a bit further to promote it.

Would be more helpful though if corp OSS users who have their entire operations underpinned by financially undersupported OSS projects stepped up to help.

[uwagar]

thank you pastor ;) i am doing enough eating their dogfood :) plus i want to move away from bringing money into my cyber life.