some_anon_dude
But then...
> The code is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
Worse: they are exploiting people's good intentions.
They co-opted the Free Software movement.
Copyleft has been painted as "business-unfriendly" and replaced with permissive licenses - aka unpaid labor without "strings attached".
> They need to learn to pony up and start funding the "free" software they use
...instead they even dodge taxes.
If only there was a way to get a bit of money from everybody to pay for common goods...
I've been saying this for decades:
For-profit companies are expected to generate profit for the shareholders. As such, donations are hard to justify.
- Most technical teams have pre-approved budgets for licenses, SaaS, consultancy services.
- Most teams do not have pre-approved budgets for donations. Managers need to go through bureaucracy and justify it.
- Donating to organizations that are not famous charities can look suspicious (think bribery & so on). Donating to an informal group more so. Donating to some person on GitHub even more so. Imagine lawyers and accountants having to explain it to some tax agency.
- Many countries don't have the tax relief and loopholes that encourage donations