Donation, patronage, gift economy, mutual aid, or whatever you want to call it is fine by me. People can pirate a lot of proprietary software as well, yet people still pay.
Piracy has clear downsides with proprietary software in most cases. Lack of updates and support are big ones. Also its considered moral to pay for your software.
Yet, people still pay for it.
An optional fee is a donation.
Donation, patronage, gift economy, mutual aid, or whatever you want to call it is fine by me. People can pirate a lot of proprietary software as well, yet people still pay.
Piracy has clear downsides with proprietary software in most cases. Lack of updates and support are big ones. Also its considered moral to pay for your software.
These same arguments are equally true for GPL software.