Why do we ask for donations so often? Because it’s important! As KDE becomes more successful and an increasing number of people use our software, our costs grow as well: Web and server hostin…
Those people are completely misinformed then. The OS did not come free. You paid for it. You pay for the license every time you buy a computer. If KDE had that then yeah it would by annoying, but they probably wouldn’t be asking then.
Most places tell you how much you are paying for it. I have to go out of my way to not pay for it since I don’t plan on using windows when I buy a new device.
“The price is included” so you did pay for it. That alone makes the comparison invalid and its pointless to even compare a free community developed product to a paid product by profit company on a revenue discussions.
I get that. I was just saying why it might tick some people off. My idea of a good OS is one that you don’t even notice while using it. It just sits in the background doing its thing and you don’t have to think about whether you’re using KDE, Gnome, or whatever, because it never makes itself known and you just happily use your programs.
In my opinion no OS manages such a feat of making itself unknown, there are always some problems, and I think you agree with that in practice (it’s more a matter of thresholds). So there is continuous improvement. The question is then whether or not the possible financial boost from the donations will improve the OS in such a way that the net benefit is positive with respect to the negative value of the donation notification (a utilitarian viewpoint, I guess). I would say it will be a net benefit, not least because the negative value of the notification is so small.
The difference is, that you’re using something for free, and you can disable this very easily.
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Those people are completely misinformed then. The OS did not come free. You paid for it. You pay for the license every time you buy a computer. If KDE had that then yeah it would by annoying, but they probably wouldn’t be asking then.
Most places tell you how much you are paying for it. I have to go out of my way to not pay for it since I don’t plan on using windows when I buy a new device.
The Windows is not free. The OEMs pay a license fee and that cost is passed on to people buying those computers.
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“The price is included” so you did pay for it. That alone makes the comparison invalid and its pointless to even compare a free community developed product to a paid product by profit company on a revenue discussions.
I get that. I was just saying why it might tick some people off. My idea of a good OS is one that you don’t even notice while using it. It just sits in the background doing its thing and you don’t have to think about whether you’re using KDE, Gnome, or whatever, because it never makes itself known and you just happily use your programs.
In my opinion no OS manages such a feat of making itself unknown, there are always some problems, and I think you agree with that in practice (it’s more a matter of thresholds). So there is continuous improvement. The question is then whether or not the possible financial boost from the donations will improve the OS in such a way that the net benefit is positive with respect to the negative value of the donation notification (a utilitarian viewpoint, I guess). I would say it will be a net benefit, not least because the negative value of the notification is so small.