> There’s no such thing as a free beer.
Except there is. Many linux distros are exactly free as in beer besides being free as in speech.
Except there is. Many linux distros are exactly free as in beer besides being free as in speech.
All those distros you mention either have commercial support (eg: Red Hat, Ubuntu) or substantial recurring donations. Someone somewhere is paying even if you specifically aren't.
That's not to say that all OSS is like this, or that all software should be ran like this but there clearly is "free beer" and "free speech" in certain places.
You might say that I pay for the universities with my taxes or the other organizations by increased prices on goods, but it clearly is offered as a free service for all, even people not paying taxes or buying their goods.
If you can't donate there are lots of ways to help: add a feature, host a pkg repo mirror, clean up docs, fix bugs, add/manage a package, donate older hardware for compat testing, help out with community support, github issues. Telling people it is awesome also helps but maybe a more detailed why would go a bit further to promote it.
Would be more helpful though if corp OSS users who have their entire operations underpinned by financially undersupported OSS projects stepped up to help.
But for all people (inside or outside of the market) there is clearly a free beer (speech included) that you can use for personal or commercial use.
> Someone somewhere is paying even if you specifically aren't.
Someone is paying, but it seems like it is more towards "paying for the library" than it is "paying for a villa".
And in some cases there really isn't someone paying, there is just a person interested in the problem. That is surprisingly common in foundational OSS tech.