Comment by Fnoord
19 days ago
You misunderstood the point. The point isn't that you are poor. The point is that the burden of the money lies on average heavier on you than someone from USA. This creates an uneven playing field.
I like to compare it with donations. If you get a USD donated, that is the same USD regardless of who gave it. Right? Right?!? Either way you don't know how heavy the burden is on the person who donated. You probably don't care. But it matters to the person who donated.
Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good?
A $1 fee is fine for Indian software developers and it kills the spam. If it's a greater burden for people in India than the US, well, not all solutions are perfect, but some are useful.
Because it discriminates a marginalized group which is by tradition very important to the FOSS community: students
Also, no it wouldn't kill spam. The spam would be moved to pwned machines where the owner would suddenly have an incentive (financial) to fix the system, if they know.
What remains is people who would be so rich that $1 means nothing to them. Ie. white collar criminals who are already rich enough to not care.