[obviouslygreen]

Agreed. This kind of Stallman-esque hard line towards charging for [insert arbitrary software component here] is short-sighted and, often, hypocritical (most people who aren't being paid to work on software don't care about this enough to argue about it).

People who live and work outside of academia (and, lately, inside of it as well) for long enough eventually figure out that this perspective is naive. It just takes a while to lift your perspective far enough to see a larger part of the picture.

[kingkilr]

I don't think you know much about Richard Stallman. He has no problem with people charging for software, indeed a right to commercial use is one of the fundamental software freedoms he enumerates.

[FooBarWidget]

Ironically, many Free Software/open source "supporters" are more hypocritical than Stallman. The thing that these people care most about is that the software is gratis. When it is not gratis but still open source (this is possible given the Free Software and Open Source definitions) these people scream fire and murder.

[jordigh]

In fact, he recommends that you charge for software.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

[zalew]

RMS is not against selling software, he supports it. Free(dom) Software is ethic licensing, it doesn't have anything to do with taking money for work.