Expecting compensation is fine. Demanding compensation is not, simply because it doesn't work: open source succeeds because those who contribute gets more collaboration and visibility than those who don't.

You can be compensated by "gorging" on other open-source that you haven't contributed to, working outside OSS, or asking for funding to keep working or work more. But if you work privately, you're competing against someone who will work publicly, while limiting someone else who would like to use your private work but can't afford it (like you can't afford others).

> now you either consolidate power into your hands (nazi mods), lose motivation (project decays), or become an "evil" capitalist(start charging money for access).

You never hear about them but there are also invitation only communities where contributing is required. The benefits are not shared outside.

There's also a teapot in space. Prove that there isn't.

The most interesting I ran into were people doing medical self-experimentation. They let me look around a bit as I was only interested in what they were doing. Eventually I had to go for not doing any work. Lots of stuff there, mostly done by dead people.

Same with taxes. People with less money have the most opinions about how other people (with more money) should spend their money.

> However on the other hand, it has been drilled into your head repeatedly that wanting compensation for work is "bad" and antithetical to social movements. You work for the whole, not for yourself.

Any ideology built on this premise is doomed to failure. Successful movements are ones that align the particular interests of individuals with the broader goals of the community.

Dogmas that set individual interest and public interest at odds with each other will always debilitate the effectiveness of the entire movement, and subject it to never-ending internal conflict.

The free software/open source ecosystem has successfully demonstrated how public-interest idealism and for-profit commercial pursuits can not just coexist, but actually complement and reinforce each other. Anyone who's arguing for one side of the ecosystem in opposition to the other is asking for the entire thing to collapse.