this confuses me more, if it’s free to use and share, how can it be not free of charge? is putting up a paywall not expressly limiting all four of those freedoms for people who can’t afford to pay? I know the article says you could get it free from a friend, but how is that different from stealing if the original dev is charging money for it? idk it just seems weird to me to focus so much on free not meaning free-of-charge when the same effort could be spent emphasizing alternate ways of monetization besides paywalling software that’s intended to be shared

besides that, it is sad to learn that people use a straw-man argument like saying someone is against developers making money just because of the idea that they support free-of-charge software. I feel like companies such as red hat have pretty much proven that free-of-charge software can be made in a system where developers still get paid (ie through selling support, taking donations, etc).

thanks again for the extra context, I appreciate you helping me improve my understanding of this situation