Recently I tried a bunch of Linux flavours, and it still pissed me off. No other distro forced me to do that.

Elementary claim making software takes effort, but how much are they contributing upstream - to Debian or to the kernel creators?

In the end, I ended up with Mint, which has a better UX anyway imo.

We are closing in on the definition of privilege here, aren't we? Being annoyed because you have to explicitly had to write (ok, update) a form to inform that you didn't want to pay?

Worse, users might even think their money goes towards "linux" – not that the money just ends up with devs who barely managed to write a desktop shell?

Aside from the fact that it is a very nice shell, what is this attitude (in a startup forum) that you shouldn't earn money?

Imagine I’d take Google’s Android Apps, add a new icon and a new theme to them "DARK THEME GMAIL", for example, and then tell everyone what a great app I made and sell it for 5$.

Most of what elementary is is a nice Linux distro – but just a distro, not even special support.

You pay for a product, where most of it was not actually made by the people you pay.

Is that fair? Is that even moral? No.

Additionally, Ubuntu does the exact same thing, and has been doing it for longer than Elementary. As soon as you click "download" on their overview page, you're sent to a contribute page. Sure, Ubuntu has a link in plain text that directly says you can download without contributing, but it's not immediately apparent either.

Arguing that it's immoral for Elementary to ask for money, even if they don't fund Ubuntu, Debian, and the Linux Kernel directly is the same as arguing it's immoral for Canonical to ask for money because they either don't, or only very minimally fund Debian and the Linux Kernel from what I've seen.

It’s still not morally okay to claim the work of someone else for yourself.

Wrong example. More like: If you don't want people to take and make a thousand copies of what you placed outside your garage and do whatever they want with it, don't place a sign outside your garage door that people are allowed to help themselves.

Yes, by all means do give back to the original author. Give credit, buy support agreements, recommend, report bugs etc etc. I'm happy to pay a little more than necessary here and there to support good projects (including elementary OS) and I push for a support agreement with the team that provide the wonderful server stack we use.

But don't tell me I have a moral obligation to not do something the license goes out of its way to allow me to do, please.

Oh, btw, people picking on elementary OS might have picked the wrong target : it is actually beautiful and works surprisingly well for some of us and it seems the money they get in goes towards bug bounties.

Bundling existing software with only minimal own involvement, and either scamming users with malware or by convincing them to pay?

Both Sourceforge and Elementary only produce a tiny amount of the code they sell (be it either a simple shell for a whole OS, or an install wizard for a most complex software).

Sourceforge 1m ago : yes

Reason : sourceforge tried to deliver something other than the users wanted, either by providing two misleading advertising on the download page or even by bundling adware/malware.

elementary provides something some people want and in exchange asks for money. This is something HN actively recommend again and again.

elementary just happens to be nice on a number of levels from letting you decide the price yourself to feeding the money back into development.

I'll make a webpage where I'll sell elementary.io then.

Obviously, the money stays completely on my account, but don't worry, the OS comes with a few additional programs I wrote (or, rather, will have written), like a nicer IRC client.

I have my doubts about whether this will make you rich but as long as you are being honest and honor the GPL etc I see no legal or moral problems.

BTW: I know that I personally was not scammed and I would guess nobody else who paid for it felt scammed either.

I think many like me are happy to chip in with a little money as I don't have capacity to contribute code or support.

download.com, yes, it is.

Then again, elementary OS is completely different as not only do they package a complete distro but they also create and maintain multiple programs.