This seems so weird to me. You're clearly providing value to the world, and according to my moral view, should be entitled to capturing some of that value without resorting to something shady.
I'm the founder of Streak where we directly monetize our extension (as do others like Grammarly). Have you tried directly asking your users for $ given the effort you put in?
I use several Firefox extensions that periodically nag me for money. I appreciate it because otherwise I would forget to donate. But now that I have monthly donations set up for several of them, I wish there was a way to turn it off.
Most FOSS android apps asking for donations do that: Sometimes a button in the donation-nag "I already donated", but pretty much every time a setting "stop asking, I either already donated or won’t donate".
Why would money be the only value, that is a really sad view on life. The developer gets joy and gratitude, they can live a happy life. Why bring money into it. Money does not make happy.
> Why would money be the only value, that is a really sad view on life.
Good thing nobody said that.
> The developer gets joy and gratitude,
Your average free software doesn't get very much joy and gratitude back from users either.
> they can live a happy life. Why bring money into it. Money does not make happy.
If the implication was too subtle, the idea is that when you spend a lot of time making something valuable, it should go towards obtaining food and shelter and the other benefits of a living wage.
It connects them, it doesn't say they're the same.
Money is an important type of value, especially the context of labor.
And, let me phrase this very precisely: there isn't an obvious non-monetary value they're getting back that comes close to the effort they put in.
You mentioned joy and gratitude but again I'm not sure how much of that they get back in this situation, plus there is the flip side of lots of complaints.
Making 2 million people individually decide and record how much of their economic output a JSON formatting extension is entitled to is a non-negligible amount of mental effort and time, especially if we had to do it for all extensions and software we use.
I believe in capitalism. I am 100% in favour of making money by offering something people are willing to pay for.
Some extensions are monetizable by honestly asking users to pay for access. Mine just isn’t. It’s only as popular as it is because it’s free and open source and promises total privacy.
I'm the founder of Streak where we directly monetize our extension (as do others like Grammarly). Have you tried directly asking your users for $ given the effort you put in?