Because the right attitude, IMO, is reciprocal altruism. You can use the thing for experimentation for free because why not. You can use the thing in your fre

Because the right attitude, IMO, is reciprocal altruism. You can use the thing for experimentation for free because why not. You can use the thing in your free thing for free because you are giving back to the world. If you want to use the thing in a non-free thing, you are no longer being altruistic so I won't either. You can use it, but the rule of "fuck you pay me" applies. I am not volunteering for a for-profit company. You're for-profit, so pay your workers. To implement this principle, the strictest GPL you can find (currently AGPLv3 or even SSPL) works and is open-source compatible, but I think non-commercial licenses also work, provided you can also get a commercial one. They have a problem if the company that produced the software disappears. AGPL probably works better. I think it's fine if Amazon hosts a modified version of a free thing, for money, if they release the source code to their modified version. All of their value is then coming from the hosting, not the modifications.