The irony of "someone should build something for free" when complaining about a donation system for helping open source projects get paid for their work.
A payment system is never simple and if it's more than a standardized "funding.txt" format it will have running costs and someone has to cover these. How much this system should charge is debatable, but it should probably be higher than 0%.
What does this mean? Using this service is letting the merits dictate. It doesn't stop anyone building a competitor.
This only works in a system where humans do not need money to live. This is not our system. In a capitalist system, for better or for worse, if you don't own a means of production you must work to get money because you need money to live.
We should recognize the value of work, and if it is useful, pay for it. It is only normal in such a system. I wish we were in a commons-based society, that all resources and production would be decided by workers in quantity and distributed based on needs, but that's not our system.
The problem comes from people believing they should be paid for willingly giving away the fruits of their labor.
I only use FLOSS and don’t feel I’m missing out at all.
I would love to live in a system where everyone is actually free to do whatever they want with their time, all day long, all year long, but that's not where we live today. What kind of people has enough time and energy to devote hours of their lives to something that is not their primary way of earning money ?
I too use only FLOSS, and only put out project under copyleft licenses, but that doesn't mean I'm blind to the structures in which we live in.