They just imply them not having to doesn't dismiss the original comment, thread being more about morals than laws.

That being said, hoping for any financial support from AI companies would be really naive. Using others work without retribution is at the core of their model.

You are allowed (and encouraged) to do good things without being obligated to.

I think it would be immensely cool if OpenAI donated some of that crapload of AI money to the people behind LibreOffice to help with development - and then having like a blog post about it or something would already improve the project's visibility a bit more (hey, every bit helps). What's peanuts to them could help with the sustainability of the project a whole bunch!

That's not true at all. Donations are the biggest source of income for The Document Foundation, the non-profit behind LibreOffice, and have been used to pay developers who've joined the team in recent years:

* Michael Weghorn (accessibility)

* Jonathan Clark (language and scripting support)

* Neil Roberts (scripting improvements)

* Dan Williams (macOS support and general UI improvements)

It obviously depends on the project and the scale and duration of a donation, but plenty of open source projects have benefited from donations. Donations can and do pay for developers, as well, part time or full time. With LibreOffice, you can answer your questions directly by browsing https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/ and as a non-profit you can easily find more detailed reports: https://www.documentfoundation.org/financials-and-reports/

> I agree that it would be the right thing to do. Which is why you have to make the best attempt to make it the legal thing

Do you believe that in an ideal world, any instance of not "doing the right thing" should be illegal?

Absolutely not.

It was illegal to harbour escaped slaves. Or hide Jews from the Gestapo.

Laws have nothing to do with morality. Or justice.

Funny how morality so often benefits incumbents and the powerful.

Many of them are, but they're focused on big picture issues and preventing harm. Most of morality has no legal force.

That's genuinely hilarious.

Mostly individuals decide what they will do, and then communities decide if they respect that or not. Doesn't exactly apply to companies tho, since they're functionally sociopaths.

They clearly would like donations, but choose not to require any payments.

Your line of reasoning seems to be along the lines of "anything not forbidden is compulsory" which is not a good place. Having the choice to donate but not being required to is good.

And yes, I think that if OpenAI is choosing to include an entire copy of LibreOffice in their product, it is definitely the right thing to do to sling them a donation. Note that the moral thing to do is not always the required thing to do, or even the legal thing to do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

> Surely "the right thing to do" includes some element of the authors' explicitly stated preferences about how they wish to be treated.

It does! And they wish to get donations. There's a button right at the top on the site making that clear.

> In this case, they chose -- explicitly -- to NOT require any payment or contribution from anyone.

Yes, so what? It is true that they wished to not require payment. That is one of their wishes, but they have more than one wish. And if they required payment, that wouldn't be a donation anyway.