First of all, I believe that everything people do is according to some ethic, or set of criteria that motivates them, so there's no such thing as "unethical."
Secondly, it's not charging money because of who they are, it's charging them because of what they have, which is money, which is a desire to have a bug fixed, and which is not expertise in doing so.
Thirdly, charging money like this is not antithetical to free software, and as a matter of fact is promoted by FSF. Here they are dispensing with your argument in the first sentence: [1]
Fourthly, if they were going to submit a PR they would already be doing so (and maybe they have), but as the story goes, the lion's share of coding is performed by Stenberg. PR's are free and money is also a resource. Why not put the resource in the place with the most expertise?
In what way is the money I suggest not a donation or support fee? Lack of contracts to complicate things? Lack of tax writeoffs? These companies don't pay taxes anyway.
OK, that's one way to look at it. In that case I mean bad ethics...
> Secondly, it's not charging money because of who they are, it's charging them because of what they have, which is money, which is a desire to have a bug fixed, and which is not expertise in doing so.
That sounds reasonable and is similar to taxing the rich I suppose, but to me it's discrimination on WHO you are.
> Thirdly, charging money like this is not antithetical to free software, and as a matter of fact is promoted by FSF. Here they are dispensing with your argument in the first sentence:
That's their opinion, my opinion is that charging money for open source software (usage, support) usually results in bad incentives for the people controlling the software (more bugs = more money), which is bad for the consumers of the software.
Allow people to contribute money/resources to the project if they want/need, is the best for everyone.
> These companies don't pay taxes anyway.
True, but a whole other issue.
Are you aware of how much price discrimination these corporations do to everyone (including yourself) every single day? Most stuff we buy everyday, including the name brand generic stuff, is priced at what we will spend and is completely divorced from any kind of cost to produce. You will be charged more if you live in a wealthy area, you will be charged more just for living in a developed country, you will be charged more for shopping at certain times of day, you will be charged more because advertising manipulated you.
It's unethical, but giving them a taste of their own medicine isn't.
If they want it fixed, let them add resources to the project like submit a pull request, donations or charge people support fees for urgent bugs, which many OSS projects do...