The usual pushback I get from FOSS zealots is that any time I mention things like money, popularity, increasing adoption etc. they just say none of that matters because it's "not a project goal."

In fact, often they don't even want money to be a thing at all, they think capitalism is inherently evil (cough innovation) and would prefer if everyone was just poor and lived in the woods or something.

Sorry... I like the world to be a little more interesting than that.

I’m not sure who is worse, the people who want everyone to be poor and live in the woods, or the ones who want to monetize every human interaction until you need a microtransaction to unlock your front door.

Maybe there’s a balance to be struck.

> money, popularity, increasing adoption

These are the currencies of the VC world, and many open source developers don't release their work for those reasons (myself included, limited though my contributions are). It seems strange to deride them as making the world uninteresting because of this.

>they think capitalism is inherently evil

Modern society has done a wonderful job proving that sentiment right. I can't blame them.

>would prefer if everyone was just poor and lived in the woods or something.

I'd prefer if everyone had proper control over the tools they used. Whether they choose to live in the woods to use such tools or use them to make society a worse place is the double edged of 'free' (as in freedom)

I completely understand those skeptical about perverse incentives from not making software 'free' (as in beer). It shouldn't be a surprise that adding monetary inventice changes the entire incentive structure.

The financialisation of everything is, frankly, fairly toxic, so it's reasonable argument.