> I'm not sure it's reasonable to separate the two. One is a concern about freedom, the other is being a cheapskate. They're very different positions. Plenty

> I'm not sure it's reasonable to separate the two. One is a concern about freedom, the other is being a cheapskate. They're very different positions. Plenty of people donate to FOSS projects or to associated organisations like the FSF and OSI, but it's a shame the numbers aren't higher by a few orders of magnitude. Monetising Free and Open Source software is unfortunately not always easy, but it's not as if it never happens. Most Linux kernel contributions are from paid kernel developers, for instance. Some projects make money from paid support services (LibreOffice, RedHat), or offering a hosted deployment of the software (SourceHut). > If I'm hoping that Amazon and Oracle and Facebook and Wal-Mart are going to pay $$$$$$$ to me and hundreds of my peers out of a sense of charity and generosity - doesn't that seem rather naive? You're right that there's nothing to stop a major cloud provider from making easy money offering a managed service powered by FOSS, then giving little to nothing back to the project itself. This is the reason mongoDB is unfortunately no longer using a FOSS licence.