Comment by bigyabai
6 days ago
> it is highly unethical to resell open source software produced by volunteers intending to make their work free.
Why? ZorinOS users can still download Blender for free if they don't pay for the mega-pack. You have to imagine that it's not very hard for Zorin to follow GPL guidelines ("here are your 13,000 source tarballs, good sir") with this business.
You also can't prove that any of these volunteers are against downstream repackaging of their work. If they were really ideologically against the idea of people being able to sell Free Software, then they probably wouldn't be putting time into a GPL project. Commercial redistribution of GPL software has been a thing since the 90s, with much larger pricetags than $48.
I still don't understand the conflation of free as in freedom with free as in free beer.
You reserve certain rights to the code, that's not to say no one gets paid for _putting in work_.
If anything these models are about as close to providing _some_ manner of income to upstream projects. If Zorin donates a portion back, that is.