Before they published this blog post, I was mildly annoyed at having to type "$0" to download Elementary, but otherwise I dug their goal of making a clean and s

Before they published this blog post, I was mildly annoyed at having to type "$0" to download Elementary, but otherwise I dug their goal of making a clean and simple-to-use desktop environment. Then they published this post -- and mind you, this is not the original version of this post (the original was worse). With statements like: >We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software. ...and... >we feel that an entire operating system that has taken years of development and refinement is worth some money. ...when all they've really done is: * Build a stripped-down Gnome-family derivative Desktop Environment * Build a custom-skinned wrapper around GTK that fits their custom DE (and expect app devs to fall in line with it) * Write a few super-primitive apps in it (a Rhythmbox fork, a notepad clone, and a basic email client) is just a -bit- overstating things, to say nothing of the difference between a desktop environment and "an entire operating system". Then they say: > Most of the open source world is similar; Inkscape and GIMP only get money for development if users decide to give it to them. without the slightest ounce of self-awareness to realize that neither of those projects make conscious design decisions to trick users into thinking they have to buy them. If I see a $____ box, my first assumption is that typing "0" has the same effect as typing "-1" or "aaaa": a validation error. It's a very close sibling of the "Sneak Into Basket"[1] UI "dark pattern". These are the moves that turned me from a fan/advocate of elementary to a critic: not that their software was poor quality (the parts they had actually built were, for the most part, roughly as nice a UI as most other Ubuntu derivatives had in my opinion), but that their philosophy and attitude made them the kind of people I want to actively avoid promoting. [1] http://darkpatterns.org/sneak-into-basket/ http://darkpatterns.org/sneak-into-basket/