The donation step is optional, so I see no "ethical" dilema here. If you can afford to donate some money to the project you could do it. If not, no problem you should use the product as you see fit.

I suspect that most Ubuntu users can donate 16$ for the project.

I'm not sure what you mean by "can't afford that."

If you think Ubuntu provides you with $X in value but you literally do not have $X to your name, well, I'm not sure how it could be providing $X to you, then.

You could be totally broke and feel like Ubuntu has the potential to provide you with $X in value (by helping you get a job, for example). You could just donate when the value is realized, not before.

Maybe you didn't mean that you literally don't have $X, but instead meant that you might not feel like it's worth paying $X for what you get out of it. In that case your choice of X was simply too high.

I don't really like the phrase "Pay what you think it's worth" for two reasons.

One of my issues with it is that it's easy to think of it as a fixed impersonal price rather than something that varies from person to person at any given time.

The other issue is that, as a developer, I do NOT want users paying what my products are worth to them. I want them to pay less than that, so they get something out of the deal. I want people to be better off for having acquired my software, I do not want to extract 100% of the value they get out of it in exchange.

>If you think Ubuntu provides you with $X in value but you literally do not have $X to your name, well, I'm not sure how it could be providing $X to you, then.

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning.

Imagine I have disposable income of $0 and I currently use Ubuntu. By your reasoning, Ubuntu is worthless to me. However, let's say that if you offered me $1 to stop using Ubuntu, I would say say "no". We can safely conclude that Ubuntu is worth more than $1 to me, even though I don't have $1 to pay for it.

Ability to pay doesn't always equal value created. If I like take walks in a national park, I obviously derive value from that resource, but I don't pay anything for it and it doesn't allow me to generate any additional income.

You certainly do pay for national parks. If you're a citizen, you pay for it in income taxes and any money paid to local businesses while shopping that they then owe in taxes. If you're not a citizen, you're still indirectly paying through taxes paid to businesses while you are on vacation. National parks are not all funded by the entrance fee, they're government-subsidized.

To answer the question, no it is not unethical to use free software for free when you cannot afford to donate. Canonical is not expecting you to pay for it, merely making it clearer that you are able to pay for it if you wish. This comes on the heels of the outcry over Amazon search being built-in, with people asking if Ubuntu is hurting for cash, why is it not easier to give them money?

>You certainly do pay for national parks. If you're a citizen, you pay for it in income taxes and any money paid to local businesses while shopping that they then owe in taxes. If you're not a citizen, you're still indirectly paying through taxes paid to businesses while you are on vacation. National parks are not all funded by the entrance fee, they're government-subsidized.

Yes, but if you're a citizen you "pay" for it in a legally obligated way, so that payment tells an observer nothing about your preferences.

I spoke imprecisely, but my point was that there are resources which are free at the point of use which still have value to the user. Perhaps a national park was a bad example, I should just have said "the countryside".

I wouldn't say the person in you example is unable to afford it, $0 disposable income just means you've chosen to spend all your money in other ways or to save it. So I don't think it's related to the question I was responding to.

Sometimes that "choice" is simply to live indoors and eat meagre meals. Oh, and perhaps to pay for the electricity to run the computer, which I suppose could be seen a s optional -- but saving that little bit of money sort of obviates the value of Ubuntu.

(Oh, and in case you were hoping to read this as typical bleeding-heart liberal craptrap, I live in 80 square feet and use a computer that is looking forward to the coming Core2 family of processors. IDE drives and what's a DDR? Is that like RamBus?)

At a higher level: In my view, when it comes to open source software, beer-free is a part of libre-free.

If you can support the open source projects you use and want to stick around, that'd be good. At a shallow level, it will make them better.

But if you ask an open source maintainer whether a cash-strapped college student or a third-world citizen should avoid using their software because they their donation money could be used for a different purpose..? I hope the answer is no. In fact, I hope the answer extends to "Bill Gates is welcome to use my code without compensating me. Obviously it'd be nice if he did, though."

I'm willing to bet an imaginary nickel that the OSS devs I know would actually be pretty surprised if they received anything at all.

Obviously, the implication is to pay what you think it's worth to you. They're not asking for you to pay the entire industrial value of the Ubuntu ecosystem divided by the number of users.