this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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Back in the olden days, there used to be a variety of free software called postcard-ware. It was free to distribute and use, but if you wanted to you could send the author a postcard.
I think the reason so many new software projects have authors asking for donations is the barrier to writing software is now incredibly low. In the 90s you’d have to have a pretty nice PC, a good dial up plan, and writing software was much more of a hobby unless you were a pro. Nowadays internet access is ubiquitous, and with the tooling and wealth of resources available anyone can write good open source software. Often those people legitimately could use a donation to help fund their free time work. That and the open source projects that are just used as dependencies for corporate projects are all too common. I absolutely blame the system where people need more money to get by rather than thinking open source software devs are more greedy nowadays
lol ok maybe not anyone