It’s not that paying for things is bad. The problem is that good software is vital to digital artists’ income, and both purchasing and learning that software is a substantial investment. When a company sells or otherwise enshittifies their software, the artist is then put in a very hard place. Open-source software is the only way to combat that unfortunately likely scenario. By all means, please pay for that software if you can afford to. Doing so subsidizes usage for less fortunate people who may be able to better their situation as a direct result of your generosity.
I have paid (by donating to them) for many of the open source software I use, so I don’t think that everything should be free (as beer) but should be free (as freedom) and therefore open source.
I don’t mind paying for good software on Linux. I don’t understand this idea that everything Linux should be free.
It’s not that paying for things is bad. The problem is that good software is vital to digital artists’ income, and both purchasing and learning that software is a substantial investment. When a company sells or otherwise enshittifies their software, the artist is then put in a very hard place. Open-source software is the only way to combat that unfortunately likely scenario. By all means, please pay for that software if you can afford to. Doing so subsidizes usage for less fortunate people who may be able to better their situation as a direct result of your generosity.
That’s not what people demand, it’s a side effect of users demanding software be open source and developers saying that’s not economically viable.
I have paid (by donating to them) for many of the open source software I use, so I don’t think that everything should be free (as beer) but should be free (as freedom) and therefore open source.