[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.