[ta_75000]

There is a considerable portion of the open source community which views capitalizing on software as inherently immoral. As soon as Werner Koch started charging money for it, most people would switch to a free fork or distribute it on the black market to spite him.

[jordigh]

I don't see this happening with FFTW or Qt. Apparently selling exceptions is fine? I can imagine a market for selling GPG exceptions.

Also, I know some free games are sold on app stores. Wesnoth comes to mind. Have people come to spite the Wesnoth developers and put the same game on the app store without a fee?

[ta_75000]

You only have to look at any thread here about copyright or piracy to see indignation at the very idea of charging money. People believe that software being free (for every definition of free) is a fundamental human right, and part of the justification made for piracy is that no one has the right to profit from software, and the for-profit distribution models need to be disrupted and undermined.

You can list a couple of exceptions, sure. But I'll see you that and raise you all of The Pirate Bay.

[acomar]

You're arguing against a straw man. The free software community has stood by using free licenses and selling exceptions and dual licensing. The FSF explicitly sells its code and gives you the source along with it. The community holds that software should be free as-in libre, not free as-in beer. This is a distinction that has been made time and time again.

That is, you are always free to charge money, but you are not free to withhold source or prevent modifications/redistribution of those modifications, because this restricts the rights of other human beings. Or said another way, your freedom stops where my nose begins.