I can't see why any free software user would consider it unreasonable to charge for delivery of a service as long as the source code for the service is freely a

I can't see why any free software user would consider it unreasonable to charge for delivery of a service as long as the source code for the service is freely available. There's nothing in the FSF / OSI that says anyone is entitled to free operation of software! There are consumer orientated services like Newsblur (http://newsblur.com http://newsblur.com) that do this. There are business orientated services such as SugarCRM (https://www.sugarcrm.com/ https://www.sugarcrm.com/) that do this. SaaS is the likely saviour of "commercial" open source. That said - yes users are unreasonable! All users, all the time. Whether it's open source or otherwise. Unfortunately, lots of open source users think the giving up of their time to report a problem means it should be solved, and they can't do it. The only thing I can offer is that it tells you how important what you created has become to them - think of it as a reverse compliment!