It's things like [1] that really irk me. Yes, they're working 'hard', yes they deserve compensation, no, there isn't any license conflicts (that I'm aware of) that would make selling eOS illegal, it's the fact that they wrote this justification to make you feel like a thief.

Really, it's just an ubuntu clone with a pretty osx-like gui. This isn't really anything amazing or new, and it makes it seem like they're trying to tap into the elitist osx market. If that is indeed what they want, they should really check out [2]

So it's not really the software that's bad, really it's all what you can get on any other distro with a little work, it's their attitude about it.

[1] http://blog.elementary.io/post/110645528530/payments [2] http://www.apple.com/jobs/us/

> tap into the elitist osx market

I think it would be more accurate to say that they are trying to expand the Linux market by wooing those whose main barrier to using Linux is the UI/UX. Whether or not you find the endeavor to be "noble", the attempt is worth something to the Linux landscape even if your takeaway is "don't run it quite like them".

Well whatever it they're doing guilt tripping people into giving them money for something that's free everywhere else isn't helping.

Woa. Wait a minute. They're merely asking for a donation, which can be set to zero. What's the issue with that? This entitled attitude is what irks me about the OSS movement at large. To a larger extent it puts me and people like me off of open source. More projects should take this approach. I thought that it's free as in Liberty, not as in ride. That's what we're constantly told.

> We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software.

http://blog.elementary.io/post/110645528530/payments

No, their clone can bitrot, they deserve it.

Wow.

OS X is hardly free

You mean like actual Ubuntu? http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/contribute/?version=1...

If you don't see much difference between the UX of the two DE's, I don't think the difference between the "request for donations" UX is that big either. Perhaps there should be some smallish text saying "$0 is a valid custom amount", but that's it.

Now, there are of course issues to be discussed about this kinds of donations requests, such as, for example, how much of the funds received make it upstream to the developers whose software distros are repackaging. But I have nothing against the idea that you might be asked whether you'd like to pay for the software or get it for free, with the understanding that both are equally valid options, even if the website is designed to suggest that they'd much prefer if you paid them for their service (added software and distro maintenance). I see nothing there that implies that I am a thief, or even a free loader, if I decide to pay null dollars for their distro. You can view it as either a free project that emphatically asks for donations (which sounds OK), or a paid free-as-in-freedom software project that allows you to get it for free if you don't want to pay (that is also valid, it's like Fedora and Red Hat, except in this case it's the exact same distro, as opposed to "practically the same").

Not saying their site is useful, btw, I had to dig through their blog to even know what ElementaryOS was. But I don't think asking for (optional) payment is the issue there.

A lot of upset came from the original version of that blog post, especially the now absent sentence

> We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software.

Ok, that's a bit different, specially if they mean that in the general, unless they are contributing directly to every single project they package with their distro and paying every contributor.

They are still within their rights to decide that their add-ons are proprietary non-zero cost software, at least those add-ons that don't link GPL code/modify LGPL code. But if their main value added is indeed modifying GPL code, and they would consider people who share those modifications for free or get them for free from a third party to be "cheating the system", I can see the issue.

Why? Developing software requires man-hours, likewise modifying software. It's not wrong to want compensation for that, regardless of license. Or maybe you hold the opinion that everyone who releases software under the GPL are suckers who shouldn't expect anything?

No, they still can ask for money. Read my comments above, I actually defend their right to make paid download the default. What they cannot do is take code released under the GPL, themselves likely getting it for free, the accuse anyone who copies their modifications without paying them of "cheating the system". They can even outright sell that software and not allow $0, that's fine, but someone will likely put a mirror up, and that person isn't "cheating the system", is playing by the same rules everyone else is. For the record, I have paid for (some) GPL software, and I still don't think it's any less valid to get it for free (most free software I have ever used is also free as in price, so...).

> This isn't really anything amazing or new

One counterexample: Contractor, an Android Intents-like system for sharing data between apps.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130314024115/http://elementary...

(archive.org link because this info doesn't seem to be on their new site, for whatever reason...)

There are other technologies like Switchboard and Granite that are unique to Elementary OS, and many of the user-facing apps were written from scratch.

Please take a look into the website and the history of Elementary. It's a huge undertaking, not merely 'a skin'. It has it's own HIG for design, a beautiful and consistent design language, and a nice set of custom-made default apps. Pantheon, the UI layer, is written from scratch, not based on Gnome, and has it's own API for writing apps in Vala.

The default download option is $25, the only way to get it "free" is to put in a custom dollar amount. You can do that, but the message they're sending is pretty obvious.

As for the negativity, I think people wonder about the "why" of this. As far as I can tell, it's basically "Ubuntu is ugly so we'll make it look like Mac".