Just because something receives funding doesn’t mean it isn’t free. I understand development has costs. Hosting has costs. But nobody is extorting payment for hosting or developing lemmy. As an end user, the service is free to use. That’s obviously what I’m referring to.
Until the grant runs out and new funding needs to be found. And when socialised funding become untenable they will turn to the users or the corporations. Nothing is free.
Asking for donations is, again, different than extortion. There’s a stark difference between a splash screen asking for funding to continue providing a free service and forcing ads and tracking in exchange for cash to operate on said FOSS platform.
Just because something receives funding doesn’t mean it isn’t free. I understand development has costs. Hosting has costs. But nobody is extorting payment for hosting or developing lemmy. As an end user, the service is free to use. That’s obviously what I’m referring to.
Until the grant runs out and new funding needs to be found. And when socialised funding become untenable they will turn to the users or the corporations. Nothing is free.
Asking for donations is, again, different than extortion. There’s a stark difference between a splash screen asking for funding to continue providing a free service and forcing ads and tracking in exchange for cash to operate on said FOSS platform.
Who said anything about extortion? We’re talking about the service being free, just because you’re not the one paying for it doesn’t make it free.