I totally agree with this. And I think it actually shows a lot about people in general, and their attitude to life.

I totally understand how can someone arrive at a conclusion that unless you can monetize or fund something, it will eventually get nowhere. But that also says a lot about the person saying that, and unfortunately is pretty common - that just a mere though of doing something for free, or for others without any compensation is basically unimaginable, and people like that will never get it.

But then you have passionate people doing volunteers for free, or creating entire events for a subculture they love while at a loss or without any kind of compensation for their (large amounts) of time and work. I'm a part of few such projects, mostly as a DJ, and I always find it really weird and surprising when I'm reading though posts or comments related to DJing where hourly rate or how much should they ask for a first gig is such a common topic. It never crossed my mind, and the communities I'm helping with are all run by volunteers without any compensation, just because they are passionate for their subculture.

Because even if you're working a day job, there is still a lot of free time left for you to offer into something you really care about. It's understandable that some people don't want to offer it to others for free (or can't even imagine how someone would be willing to do that, and probably even think that they are stupid to do so), but I'm really glad that some people are willing to do that - and that's what the FOSS community is about.

It's always saddening when I hear someone say "You could be making so much money for that! Just monetize it a little...", but it's also a really good judge of character. People are people, I guess.

Thanks for taking the effort of writing out what I think.

This all-pervasive thinking that if a company employs some people to work on some community FLOSS project then we should all accept that that project would never had gotten anywhere if not for the almighty capital is so stupid. Especially since if it's the reverse, like look at when Bethesda games only being a thing at this point because of its modders, but the company owns the IP so we should all thank the company.

If the community owns the IP and some companies contribute the barest minimum or even just donate to the project, boom, it's a capitalist commercial success since they "bankrolled" the project.

If it's the other way around, a company puts out some mediocre software (seriously Beth, metro cars as hats?) and the community makes it something magnificent, then again, the achievement is the corporation's, since they own the IP, right?

Most of human achievement was either independent of, predating, or even achieved in the spite of capitalist corporations. They are a tool, not the almighty saviour.

TL;DR, this is the summarized version? lol

I don't know what Lichess is, but Debian has plenty of beefy sponsors, including Google and HP. Their monetisation strategy is sponsorship and it works. But they still have monetisation, that's the thing.

Amen!