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by apgwoz 525 days ago
The fact of the matter is that there are many motivations for creating software. If someone profits off of my work, that I released into the world with licensing terms that allows them to do so, there’s no obligation that I be paid for it. I could have, myself, recognized the potential and done the work to make a marketable tool, but my motivation was different.

You can fault the FOSS community for promoting default libre licensing that created the “exploitable” nature of this, but the fact of the matter is that people creating software are able to make a choice. They can make a different choice if they wish.
1 comments
bennythomsson 525 days ago
You a seem to be misunderstanding if not misrepresenting my point. I applaud the FOSS community for these licenses. I use them myself. And I don't expect any payment. And it's fine that if anybody invests a lot of expertise and time to build a complicated product to commercialize it. Even better if they contribute back in one way or another.

This is about a green kid coming along and quickly churning out lots of half-baked solutions, asking for frankly quite a lot of money for those, apparently without acknowledging the giants on whose shoulder they are standing. Legally they have the right to do so, sure. But we as a community can give push back in that that's not how things will work in the long run. I encourage you to check out his personal home page, you'll see what I mean. (And again, I generally applaud the enthusiasm. But those things would better be suited as portfolio-building personal OSS projects on github rather than trying to squeeze the dollars.)

There is a difference between legitimate business interests after large investments, and freeloaders.

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pcchristie 525 days ago
> But we as a community can give push back in that that's not how things will work in the long run. I encourage you to check out his personal home page, you'll see what I mean.

What exactly does this mean?

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apgwoz 525 days ago
> (And again, I generally applaud the enthusiasm. But those things would better be suited as portfolio-building personal OSS projects on github rather than trying to squeeze the dollars.)

Why? They are under no obligation to do so, and then they are working for free. (A common trope related to FOSS, often argued on this very website)

> There is a difference between legitimate business interests after large investments, and freeloaders.

What large investment are you talking about? The thousands of hours of free labor that went ffmpeg? Yeah. See also all of the open source software that went into the operating system and utilities they built everything on. That doesn’t stop people from selling proprietary software, so why is this any different?

This is free market capitalism. If they can find people to pay $29 for a copy of this wrapper, more power to them. That also happens to be a much more powerful resume bullet point.

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