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

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

Your feelings about what constitutes "the right thing to do" are apparently different from those of the authors. You believe you know better than they themselves do how they should be treated.

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marcus_holmes an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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satvikpendem an hour ago | parent [-]

More like, don't expect anything if not forced. Most people only generally pay for things if there is no other option. It's about what's moral (even then debatable as everyone has different morals) versus what's realistic to expect.

	▲	marcus_holmes an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The Guardian's funding model [0] proves this wrong. People will absolutely pay for things voluntarily if you ask them, without forcing them to. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2018/nov/12/katharine... In a nutshell - voluntary funding by readership. No paywall. You can read as many stories as you like for free, and donate if you want. It works.

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mastazi an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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Dylan16807 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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.