Stardew Valley, which has been sold to millions of gamers, has been created using the free MonoGame engine. So ConcernedApe is giving back to the open source software which made his commercial success possible, like commercial parties should.
If the authors wanted money for their software, they would have sold it instead of giving it away for free as a gift.
By releasing software under free software licenses you are explicitly stating that you do not expect or anticipate payment for it. The licenses (that they freely chose) are clear. Free software, in addition to being free as in speech, is also always free as in beer.
My friend bought me lunch. I used that energy at my job. Do I owe them part of my paycheck?
If I gave you a gift and you tried to give me money, I would be offended.
I’m not saying free software publishers wouldn’t accept donations - just that publishing free software is giving a gift to the world, and there is NO moral obligation placed on recipients. That’s the point of free software.
You are simultaneously arguing for 'moral' subjectivity while utilizing the strawman of 'moral obligation'. Who would enforce this 'obliging' if the subject of morality is still up for debate?
You are tying yourself in embarrassing knots over someone spreading their wealth, unsolicited, to people who helped them achieve it? Why? What's the end goal?
Go argue with someone about the morality of environmental impacts of tech... or something...
Remind me, which Ferengi Rule of Acquisition is this?
There's not much argument to be had. You've created a logical justification for a myopic, misanthropic world view.
> My friend bought me lunch. I used that energy at my job. Do I owe them part of my paycheck?
Many find reciprocation important in a relationship.
You made my morning with this quip.
Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to.
Nobody said it wouldn't be nice, but that it does not confer "obligation". This is the key word. I would argue a world where people do things because they want to, and not because they feel they have to, would actually generally be a nicer world to live in.
> Many find reciprocation important in a relationship.
Yes, and those sorts of relationships aren't really built on much if a gift obligates the other to repay. Why even buy lunch then? It just becomes this back and forth obligation and it is wearing and actually erodes the relationship slightly, if anything. I would argue a true gift is one that does not obligate the other party to reciprocate. That does NOT mean it would not be a decent thing to do something nice (for the other person OR someone else), but just that it is not obligated. The person should not feel a weight to do so. Once this weight is lifted, it is actually very freeing, and it strengthens the relationship, if anything.
I don't buy someone lunch with an implicit expectation that they'll buy me lunch in the future. That's tacky and gross. I buy lunch because I wanted to buy them lunch, and if they decide to buy me lunch, I happily accept.
If they say or act as if there's something expected? I'm returning that "gift". That's a bargaining chip, not a gift.
Yes, there's no argument because you're incapable of coming up with an argument because you don't have anything to base it on. You're just responding emotionally and trying to slander them because you know that they made a good point and you hate that.
> You've created a logical justification for a myopic, misanthropic world view.
It is neither. It is a quite reasonable worldview that the vast majority of the population subscribes to and finds rather acceptable.
> Many find reciprocation important in a relationship.
This is a non-answer, because you know that the answer is "no", but you can't bear to say it because that would be admitting that your position is inconsistent, yet you can't assert that the answer is "yes" because that's obviously insane.
Thank you for so eloquently refuting all of your own arguments.
More importantly: you are forgetting the meaning of “acquisition”. The instant the author released the software as free software, it was no longer “theirs”. It became everyone’s. The authorship is from that instant irrelevant.
It was “acquired” by the user in a moral sense at the time it was licensed by the original author (for a payment of $0, chosen by the author), not at the time the licensee began using it to make millions.
The original author chose the moral obligation placed upon the recipients of this gift, and they EXPLICITLY chose zero when they picked the license. To donate money to them later is to contravene their expressed wishes.
You can pretend that “they didn’t really mean that” but they are free to commit any text whatsoever they choose in ./LICENSE, and they chose one that declares THEIR OWN PERSONAL OPINION of the payments morally obligated by use of the software to be zero.
https://framerusercontent.com/images/9GsFxfDtmRFpfgGlNH61QsX...
He also needs that tool to stay alive for the future, even if not considering the past.
It's a bit better position for everyone.
The example isn't quite accurate. If a friend bought you lunch, the social norm of reciprocity would incline you towards buying them lunch in the future (i.e part of your paycheck)
Free open source software is a public good. While there is no obligation to give back, giving back helps that public good become more useful to other people (including your future self). I'm against making contribution an obligation, but I'm not against light social pressure upon philanthropists who have the means (which is what the parent comment was doing).
There should be zero social pressure, as gifts do not convey obligation. It was the software author’s explicit choice when licensing and publishing the software to make clear that payment is not expected.
You are correct that no legal obligation was passed, but generally people feel that if you got something from a community that helped you succeed greatly you do have an obligation to throw something back to the organization to help it help others.
If you don't, that'ss generally classified by people as being a jackass
You're correct about that. The free software itself doesn't confer any responsibility. But the free software exists inside other contexts. Social/moral context. There're also future contexts for you or humanity. For example, if developing free software proves to be a sustainable model for people to do, you might get other projects LIKE the Blender Foundation to crop up in the future. You might benefit from them directly, or benefit from them by enjoying the things people produce with them. Also, if it's a tool that you like to use, maybe you just want that specific tool to continue to improve.
No but you owe him lunch next time. Wait till you find out that you have to share your birthday cake on your birthday.
This also gives them direct access to the devs and can request new features or bug fixes that impact them to be prioritized. Everyone benefits. It's probably much cheaper to make a contribution than to do that in house and upstream the changes.
Someone built this and is letting you have it. For free. There is no legal obligation or law of the universe here, sure, but if you're in the top 1% of benefactors of this pro bono work, you have the opportunity to do some good and make sure that others, like you, get the chance to benefit from this free work in the future.
There is a pretty straightforward argument to be made that this falls under the "with great power comes great opportunity" umbrella of moral reasoning, since this work empowered CA to create the game that earned him a lot of money.
Giving a fake gift that comes with unspoken strings attached (and “keeping score” in your head) is the passive-aggressive, immoral act. If reciprocity is expected, it is definitionally not a gift.
Releasing software under a free software license is a choice to give a gift to the world. If the author wanted moral obligation strings attached, the license would say that.
If I get tremendous value out of MS office 365 but my agreement with MS charges me only $15/month, should I donate some extra to them because of how much it helps my business?
Correct!
Reread the original comment that kicked off this thread in that light and the overwhelming majority of replies and votes should hopefully make a lot more sense.
Edit: for the record:
> if they want you to have more, they should tell you, we don’t need some weird unspoken guidelines related to licenses,
Again check the original comment which wasn’t written by them but by a third party commenting on the state of a community.
Those unspoken guidelines aren’t any more or less weird than any other ones we share as humans. (Actually I’d say they’re far less so than most.)
No, he's not, because there's no social contract on the internet. Making these analogies between real-world communities and "the Internet" is an obviously stupid thing to do if you think about it for five seconds.
And not only is there no social contract on the Internet, but because of its nature there cannot be, and attempting (futilely) to implement one is extremely harmful.
So, as a result, the license is all there is. If you publish it as open-source, users have zero obligation to contribute. If you want revenue, then use a commercial license and sell it.
It should go without saying, but the insane mental backflips that open source advocates go to in order to make wild claims like this harms their position, not helps it. Don't make absurd statements to try to ignore the fact that asking for money for your software with an actual license is the only reasonable way to get money for your software - it'll just cause normal people to take the entire movement less seriously.
Is this a meta comment to demonstrate your belief that basic human mores don’t apply on the internet? Quite frankly I find it more of a refutation.
Neither is my comment particularly offensive. You seem to have trouble differentiating between refuting someone's points and attacking their character.
Maybe that's why you attacked me, because you wanted to argue with my points but can't tell the difference between the two?
You're a fascinating character. If you're ever in New York let me know because I would love to see how you are in real life. I'm actually quite sure we'll get along after a bit of alignment! Weirder things have happened.
Stay blessed, my friend.
Ahhh, yes, of course. Because the first thing that someone with a good response does is to never use it (especially if it's a cause they feel strongly about) and instead attack the character of the one who poked holes in their initial argument. Silly me.
Including, of course, oneself. Keeping the project you depend on running is good business.
That's the point of a FOSS license. You give the power back to the end users. This was purposefully chosen by the Monogame project.
Donate to the F/OSS projects that you used to make it big.
The only way anyone knows your intent as a developer is in the restrictions and terms you release under. There are open source contributors that really want nothing. It makes no sense to say you want nothing and then get upset when you don’t get something.
If someone doesn’t like Apache 2.0, MIT, or BSD, there are lots of other options they can release the source under, or they can start a proprietary software business.
The donation here is great obviously, “paying it forward” is great, but so is using software under the terms its writer told you you could.
For a lot of people, a gift is not a gift but an invitation to abuse, and it's hard to be rational or pro-social about it when you were on the receiving end of that as a child.
I am simply tired of people pretending that using free software means that the author is owed a damn thing, even if you go and make a billion dollars with it. It doesn’t affect them one way or another what you do with something that they willingly chose to make no longer theirs. After releasing something as f/oss it shouldn’t even be called “yours” because you wrote it. After you choose to release it as free and open source, it is everyone’s software; it is no longer yours and the fact that you wrote it is now irrelevant.
Technically not, but giving back is a nice thing to do
Or in other words: Bruh, we live in a society.