Assigned seating has been the norm here for decades. Makes things go a little more smoothly, especially when everyone expects it.

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But then of course you’d have to live somewhere that isn’t the greatest country in the world.

Again, my freedom to use and modify the code as I see fit - including selling it - is the whole point.

There’s no doubt the developers deserve support for their work, but there’s no requirement imposed by Free Software for this.

All criminals get away with their crimes for a time. How many companies want to be sitting on a time bomb like that though?

The ability to modify the code is a central tenet of free software. The GPL takes care of making those modifications available to others. That effectively is the payment the original devs get.