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If i ahead of time decided to give my next dollar to the next guy begging, why not?



That's a really silly precommitment. If you were sensible, your actual commitment should be "help the next person who requires help, provided that help can be provided in the form of one dollar".


That's why the premise in the grandparent post is ridiculous.

But the license of a piece of software is not ridiculous - if you chose a very permissive license, you cannot then go and choose who should or shouldnt be profiting off your software. The license was a pre-commitment.

But lots of people make this pre-commitment, but then makes a moral/ethical judgement post-facto when someone rich seems to be able to extract more value out of the software than what "they deserve", and complain about it.


"Permissive" licenses, in fields where abusive corporations are known to operate, are a really silly precommitment. Copyleft exists for a reason. But, even if you (foolishly) made that precommitment, that doesn't then mean you have to do free labour for the abusive corporations, out of some misguided ideological consistency. (Such consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.)


I mean, the MIT license might be a “more permissive” license but it says very explicit things that Microsoft is explicitly ignoring. Your license choice doesn’t matter when they ignore the license anyway.


If a guy comes begging for money out of rolls royce, I guess they either are pretty bad at begging or have a pretty bad sense of humor. I guess I wouldn't give money to them, it doesn't seem like it'll help them regardless.


What is the difference between a rolls royce and a celebrity benefit? You shun Shriners if they have a catered $1000 fund-raising dinner?




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