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Comment by hpoe | Hacker News Reader

I don't disagree with the sentiment but I do disagree with the implementation part of way Free Software (free as in speech) works is because I can do whatever I want with it, if I don't want to charge I shouldn't be forced to. Tbh what you are suggesting sounds like getting rid of FOSS entirely and bringing it back under the guise of Freeware.

If you really don't want corporations to benefit off your work without contributing back go GPL or stop maintaining it.

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The thing is that not every developer is in a privileged position to provide work without payment. Good example are unpaid internships - if you want to gain experience, but you are coming from a poor background, you are unlikely going to sign up for such internship, because you will not have means to pay bills and so you are forced to find job that pays, not even necessarily in the field you would want. This creates divide, because only people from privileged backgrounds can gain experience this way and in the end get better jobs. That's why in many countries (for example in the UK) unpaid internships are illegal to create a level playing field. I think it should not be allowed to give away your work for free (to corporations) because of that. Then if you really don't want this money, you could send it to a charity of your choice. Such way would be much fairer to everyone.

Sure but we are talking about developing FOSS software not unpaid internships. So what relevance does your comment have towards me wanting to realease Free Software?

Not every developer is in a privileged position to contribute to open source projects, because they have bills to pay and have to commit time to do paid work. This can compromise their changes at getting better jobs, as employers tend to look whether someone has open source contributions in their resume. Very often it is not even possible to show any code from previous jobs, because it is confidential. This is just one of angles where this kind of model creates social divide.

Sure, its not everyone. On the other hand it also suck to be forced to pay.

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