1) Someone paying for my product means that they now expect support and maintenance for me. When I release my software under a Free license, I release it "AS IS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED", which I think is the best part of Free Software. You are responsible for using my software.
2) As soon as you start accepting compensation for your project, you now have to deal with a whole bunch of legal overhead, taxes etc.
I think the main issue is people releasing their software under a license which they don't necessarily agree with beyond a certain point.
In worst case you give a refund if the software doesn't work as promised for the customer. You're not forced to fix bugs or problems that are beyond your capability or interest.
Taxes are not a big deal and can be ignored until you start making decent money on the business and can afford your accountant. The taxman understands and is not going after people in the starting phase.
It's a ego thing then. Anybody doing free/open source software should make peace with the fact that their work is given for free. Imagine Linus Torvalds complaining that people are selling his work.
You solve your problem and share the code for everyone to use. They can fork and change it to solve their own problems, you've finished working on it a while ago.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120620103603/http://zedshaw.co...
> Why I (A/L)GPL
> I want people to appreciate the work I’ve done and the value of what I’ve made.
> Not pass on by waving “sucker” as they drive their fancy cars.
And yes, being paid should always be an option.
The only question seemingly no one has solved is: how?
...especially so that everybody wins - individuals and corporations, benefitting from said software, the maintainers _and_ their collaborators (sidenote: that's something that kinda grinds my gears - sponsored projects receive all the dough, with their various collaborators essentially working for free??) etc. etc.
Folks are just ignorant of licensing the majority of the time. GPL is why Linux is still around :)