As an outsider to the whole open-source culture, this line struck me as...strange:

>"When I first heard of the practice of selling exceptions, I asked myself whether the practice is ethical. If someone buys an exception to embed a program in a larger proprietary program, he's doing something wrong (namely, making proprietary software)."

This might be a kneejerk reaction, but why does he feel the world is entitled to the labor of a programmer for "free"? What's his alternative business/labor model? Is it compatible with capitalism? What am I missing here? I'm reading through some of the philosophy on gnu.org to try and sympathize but it still seems insane to me:

"When you use proprietary programs or SaaSS [Service as a Software Substitute], first of all you do wrong to yourself, because it gives some entity unjust power over you. For your own sake, you should escape. It also wrongs others if you make a promise not to share. It is evil to keep such a promise, and a lesser evil to break it; to be truly upright, you should not make the promise at all.

There are cases where using nonfree software puts pressure directly on others to do likewise. Skype is a clear example: when one person uses the nonfree Skype client software, it requires another person to use that software too—thus both surrender their freedom. (Google Hangouts have the same problem.) It is wrong even to suggest using such programs. We should refuse to use them even briefly, even on someone else's computer."

You're free to stop using Skype any time if you don't like the terms. When I use the subway, aren't I surrendering my freedom since I can't get off whenever I want? So are subways that don't stop whenever any person demands it unethical? What is this guy smoking?

> This might be a kneejerk reaction, but why does he feel the world is entitled to the labor of a programmer for "free"? What's his alternative business/labor model? Is it compatible with capitalism? What am I missing here?

He doesn't refer to "free" as of cost, but "free" as in "freedom". The Free Software model fully permits that software is only available to people who pay for it, they would just get source+binaries and would have the rights to redistribute as they please.

Most companies who use this model tend to dual-license, though. That is, a copyleft license for most people, and for those who fear it, they can purchase an exception to use it as proprietary software. In years gone by, this was GPL/proprietary, but in this world of SaaS/SaaSS, AGPL has supplanted the GPL as the "toxic" license of choice to encourage companies to buy licenses.

Can you expand on "toxic" as it applies to AGPL and why it's in scare quotes?

IIRC it requires open sourcing everything involved in a service, unlike the GPL

I'd like to see something more specific, everything I can find does not say this. Just the modifications.

You're absolutely correct, but there's a lot of misinformation, largely attributed to people's understanding of earlier versions of the AGPL, before the GNU project adopted it and reworked it for AGPLv3.

He doesn't. I don't believe he's ever really had issue with programmers selling their labor. What he's objecting to is the idea of proprietary software; that is, the idea of software that the end user cannot see the source code to, and cannot modify for their own purposes if needed.

"You're free to stop using Skype any time if you don't like the terms."

At one point in time, the terms to using Skype could be agreeable to me, and so I invest in using it, get my friends using it, and use it for my business. Then later, those terms change, and because I do not have any rights to the code or do not have any of it under my control, either I have to spend a lot of time, effort, and money to replace Skype with something else, or just suck up and take it.

> that is, the idea of software that the end user cannot see the source code to, and cannot modify for their own purposes if needed.

Ability to share the software (with or without modification) is also amongst the "four freedoms", which places some practical limits on selling copies of the software past the first.

Flipping this around, I find it remarkable that, in the realm of Free Software, we can be having a serious conversation about the applicability and appropriateness of capitalism.

This is part of what I love about ideas like UBI. If I could feel secure in my long term badic needs, I’d like nothing more than to dedicate myself to socially rewarding purposes.

I've atleast once seen "commercial license" to mean "MIT License", so it doesn't always have to mean "proprietary"; it can just as well mean "more business friendly license"