> Isn't that what "buying" is? No, buying is a financial transaction, without which you will not acquire the goods that you're after. With open source, you'll

> Isn't that what "buying" is? No, buying is a financial transaction, without which you will not acquire the goods that you're after. With open source, you'll just take the code, benefit from it (like large corpos that make millions through it), but aren't obligated to give any of that money to the authors. While also not stealing, to me that sounds like exploitation on some level - the authors oftentimes seeing that as the status quo and being okay with it doesn't make it any less exploitative in my eyes. > If nobody willingly wants to pay for a thing, then the author deserves to get paid for it? Why? Because they're making the world a better place with the code that they create. If nobody wants to acknowledge that or willingly give them money for it (recognition also would be nice, but you can't eat recognition), then in my eyes the problem lies with society. In a better society, people who do the work would be taken care of.