> I guess I’m not convinced that if software is offered for free in the first place that it always makes sense to expect money to be offered without asking for

> I guess I’m not convinced that if software is offered for free in the first place that it always makes sense to expect money to be offered without asking for it. I'm explicitly not talking about the "software ... offered for free in the first place". I'm talking about changes to that software at someone else's request. > I just don’t necessarily agree with the hyperbole that unpaid labor is “wrong”, because that undermines the initial OSS transaction. I don't think this is true because of the genesis of the open source software itself. I created it for my needs. I would do it even if I didn't plan to give you a copy, but the transaction between us is near zero cost so I go ahead and let you use it too because I'm a cool guy. > The software was offered for free-as-in-beer in the first place, and that is unpaid labor. I'm making a claim that doing something to scratch your own itch doesn't qualify as 'unpaid labor' in any useful sense. It would be like saying doing a hobby is unpaid labor. > It’s perfectly fine to request pay for changes, so isn’t that better and more straightfoward than not asking for money but complaining when none comes? The current norm is to not request pay or to expect to pay. My argument is that norm should be inverted and maintainers should expect payment to be offered, and requestor should expect to offer to pay. If a specific dev doesn't want to be paid, then fine. It's really about the norm changing, not mandating individual behavior.