[kragen]

i agree with Proven's [dead]ed comment that "Free software doesn't exist to reward developers and contributors." in the sense that the reason it's good for free software to exist is that it rewards users, not developers and contributors

on the other hand, the events which cause it to exist are that developers and contributors write it, so in that sense it does exist because it rewards developers and contributors in some sense

different people find different things rewarding. perhaps some people do find it rewarding to subsidize large companies with bad internal policies. but i don't