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Comment by bennythomsson | Hacker News Reader

Of course they provide value! They car dealer selling you that new Toyota also provides value. Without him you couldn't buy that car, certainly not so easily.

Doesn't mean he manufactured it, or invented it, or conceived of the very idea of an automobile with an ICE (or EV). It's all a big collaborative effort, and imagining that all of the $40k for that car go straight into the dealer's pocket would be absurd. Legally absurd, and ethically absurd as well.

Similar with a piece of software that builds on other work. Of course it provides value (hopefully). But on the whole, the extra value added is not the majority of the whole package.

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You can also just say what you are thinking: $25 of every $29 license should go back to ffmpeg. There. I made your point for you, directly.

That's not what I'm thinking. Where exactly should those $25 go? If there is such an easy place, fine, go ahead. I personally don't see one, since there are many giants on whose shoulders he is standing on.

There are other options, many of them have been mentioned in this discussion.

I suppose my main point is that the apparently new quite inexperienced guy, as appreciated as his enthusiasm is, should at some point understand that all the tech he uses for free didn't fall from the sky and just whipping the cream that floats on top for personal profit is not a sustainable model. Even though that seems to be the trend these days.

The fact of the matter is that there are many motivations for creating software. If someone profits off of my work, that I released into the world with licensing terms that allows them to do so, there’s no obligation that I be paid for it. I could have, myself, recognized the potential and done the work to make a marketable tool, but my motivation was different.

You can fault the FOSS community for promoting default libre licensing that created the “exploitable” nature of this, but the fact of the matter is that people creating software are able to make a choice. They can make a different choice if they wish.

You a seem to be misunderstanding if not misrepresenting my point. I applaud the FOSS community for these licenses. I use them myself. And I don't expect any payment. And it's fine that if anybody invests a lot of expertise and time to build a complicated product to commercialize it. Even better if they contribute back in one way or another.

This is about a green kid coming along and quickly churning out lots of half-baked solutions, asking for frankly quite a lot of money for those, apparently without acknowledging the giants on whose shoulder they are standing. Legally they have the right to do so, sure. But we as a community can give push back in that that's not how things will work in the long run. I encourage you to check out his personal home page, you'll see what I mean. (And again, I generally applaud the enthusiasm. But those things would better be suited as portfolio-building personal OSS projects on github rather than trying to squeeze the dollars.)

There is a difference between legitimate business interests after large investments, and freeloaders.

> But we as a community can give push back in that that's not how things will work in the long run. I encourage you to check out his personal home page, you'll see what I mean.

What exactly does this mean?

> (And again, I generally applaud the enthusiasm. But those things would better be suited as portfolio-building personal OSS projects on github rather than trying to squeeze the dollars.)

Why? They are under no obligation to do so, and then they are working for free. (A common trope related to FOSS, often argued on this very website)

> There is a difference between legitimate business interests after large investments, and freeloaders.

What large investment are you talking about? The thousands of hours of free labor that went ffmpeg? Yeah. See also all of the open source software that went into the operating system and utilities they built everything on. That doesn’t stop people from selling proprietary software, so why is this any different?

This is free market capitalism. If they can find people to pay $29 for a copy of this wrapper, more power to them. That also happens to be a much more powerful resume bullet point.

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