this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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Free software != free of charge.
Nothing about free software says you need to give it away for no cost, nor that anyone can't do it. You can charge $100 for a simple calculator program that is under the GPL for its code. Nothing is there to prevent you from assembling the code and making it yourself, or from the buyer from copying and sharing the program. It's just way way easier to show off the program for free as in price and freedom for most programmers.
It's why the people who made Debian/Slackware/Ubuntu discs could charge money for an otherwise free product. Because the programmers openly allow this.
And programming is itself labor, just a lot of free software devs don't worry too much about getting paid for it.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
The point I was trying to make (and I should have made properly) is that paid software has a free tier supported by ads. It being paid is just a trigger that makes me think "are they injecting google's code in their product". And if they are then your data IS being collected without your consent or knowledge by Google. (Same goes for any other "ad" provider). Who knows what the google API call takes?