If you want people to travel (because them travelling is good for business) you probably don’t want them to be stiff and unproductive after a long flight, and you don’t want to make the experience so unpleasant that they won’t want to travel.
That's a good question! However I am not sure what that has to do with what I am saying? People pay for over priced luxury goods all the time. There are psychological reasons for that (signaling wealth among other things).
If you look at the commenter's other messages, you seem very much to be making their point for them. The thing that they are advocating for is what you seem to be trying to, through snark, give them an education on.
No one makes coach tickets available for free and then asks people to pay after the fact. Certainly no one would do that and then complain that the system is broken because nobody is paying. People, on the whole, do not behave in a way that's compatible with that kind of thing, and the expected outcome there matches the outcome that we see today with (un)-sustainable open source.
My point is that the evidence is in and clearly companies/people don't do that. And some OSS maintainers then get all upset and throw their toys around because people don't behave as they expect. My answer is: Grow up. Accept the world as it is. And act accordingly.
It costs me $0 to walk to work but i pay for transportation because it gets me there faster and more comfortably. You just are looking at cost too narrowly.
I don't understand your argument at all. Companies and people in general only pay for things they have to pay for. So if you ask for $0 that is exactly what they will pay. It is not a difficult point I am making.
Let's assume that I did decide to walk to work for $0. Even though the cost is free, I may have to pay for better walking shoes. Additionally, I may have to buy a umbrella to prevent getting rained on. I also may want to think about the safety and security of the streets that I walk down. And lastly, I may after some time walking, have a foot/leg injury that requires either medical attention or physical therapy. My point is that even though the cost was $0 up-front there is additional costs that show up because of my prior decision to walk. These indirect/future costs need to be considered especially as a business deciding to utilize OSS for some operational need.
In a way, you should evaluate each OSS tool/library as if it was a business which further corroborates the blog post's point.
