A gift economy only exists between people who agree that they are participating in one.

Gifts between equals create expectations of reciprocity. If you use open source software, you are expected to contribute. Accepting a gift without an intention to reciprocate is an admission of social inferiority. Users who don't see themselves as socially inferior to developers are not participating in the gift economy and not bound by the social contract.

> Accepting a gift without an intention to reciprocate is an admission of social inferiority.

I wish I'd read your response more thoroughly before responding from my phone in a parking lot.

You do not understand gift economies at all. You've reduced them to transactionality, which is capitalism, and capitalism kills gift economies for fun.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a molecular biologist who is also a mother and a member of the Anishnaabe peoples. Braiding Sweetgrass is a book everyone should read, but you especially. The Serviceberry is a much shorter and denser discussion of gift economies but I doubt it's approachable for anyone who has read nothing of hers.

> If you use open source software, you are expected to contribute.

No, not in a million years.

No, emphatically not. We are surrounded by them and people behave as if they are without acknowledging it. Saying it isn’t so doesn’t change the fact that we give more attention to people who [give] us free shit. It’s baked into our little monkey brains.