Because users like yourself feel entitled to have access to the work of others without regard how we manage to pay our bills.
All nice and good when it is possible to sell books, consulting services or hide the software behind a SaaS pay-wall that helps to pay the bills, which is absolutely not the case for desktop software unless it is web based applications behind that pay-wall.
Thus preventing any kind of long term business model targeting the GNU/Linux desktop.
Which is yet another reason why many rather target app stores nowadays.
Where is this bitterness and hostility coming from? How do you know what kind of user I am, and what kinds of works I may or may not be personally responsible for within the free software community?
I happen to know the struggle you speak of first-hand. I paid my bills early on in my journey by teaching courses related to the subject matter my project touched upon. Free software has _no opinions_ on the adequate income model for developers who involve themselves in its world. The beauty of free software is that it is agnostic to your kind of ethics-mongering, which is why I have chosen to be so intimately involved in it myself.
We all need to make a living, and I don't have any presumptions over how someone chooses to do it. However, I think you would be better to not force your particular difficulties and decisions on this front on the entire GNU/Linux user base.
Why should one feel entitled to use software legally available for free? Do you feel guilty for using HN without paying YC for it? What a weird concept.
Yes, there's a lack of money in Free Software. Yes, there are consequences from that, like the abandonment of certain projects. That doesn't mean non-paying users are somehow guilty of something, that's a poisonous attitude.
All nice and good when it is possible to sell books, consulting services or hide the software behind a SaaS pay-wall that helps to pay the bills, which is absolutely not the case for desktop software unless it is web based applications behind that pay-wall.
Thus preventing any kind of long term business model targeting the GNU/Linux desktop.
Which is yet another reason why many rather target app stores nowadays.