I don't disagree with what you said, but I'd like to comment on a few points. >We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when th

I don't disagree with what you said, but I'd like to comment on a few points. >We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software. (Auch, reading that hurt; still...) There they didn't say users are cheating for not paying them, but for not paying in general. Also consider that The Linux Foundation, the FSF, Canonical... all have way bigger communities and visibiliy, and relations with big companies and other ways of obtaining economical support. Elementary depends only on their reduced user base. > it is just Ubuntu + Pantheon Shell. Well, yes. But they still put a lot of work into it. It rest on the shoulders of the GTK and Gnome giants, but they have still put a lot of work. Describing them that way isn't, imho, fair at all. Apart from the Pantheon's surface, they've been working on libraries as Contracts and Granite GTK. I've no idea if they're complicated behemoths or ridiculously thin work-of-an-afternoon additions to GNU/Linux. I think I would be fine with it if they had just mentioned "hey, our hard work depends on the hard work of this fellas, consider donating to them too!". Specially if really they are not making any profit as of yet, I don't think it's that bad to ask for the funding to continue your work from the people who enjoy it. PD: I'm writing this from Elementary, which I use on two computers. In this one I ended up going back to Awesome WM, but I keep Pantheon on the other. I really like it, even if it isn't an incredible distance away from Xubuntu. Although I'm not particularly wealthy, I'll consider donating a few bucks to Elementary. It is not the first OSS project I donate to, but I'll also consider donating to it's upstream. PD2: I was partly playing devil's advocate. Even as an Elementary user, I didn't particularly like this post.