ElementaryOS is getting ready to roll out their new site and their blog post about it is borderline retarded.
Why We Make You Type “$0”
Because you're fucking retards, that's why. If you don't make it clear that you can download the system for free, then what you are doing is questionable at best. I would go as far as to call that a scam. A deliberate malicious scam. If you don't want people to download your system for free, then don't let them do so. Super simple stuff.
We didn’t exclude a $0 button to deceive you
Yes you did.
We believe our software really is worth something
No one is disputing that. But if you put it out there for free, you don't get to complain that people take you up on your offer.
But Open Source means Free!
That's a straw man. Only very stupid (or new to the industry) people think that open source == no charge. We have opensource projects that charge for support and binary builds. It's perfectly ok to do so. Unless you're pretentious lying pieces of shit, that is.
Oh, and there was a gem that was deleted from the original blog post (but the internet remembers everything):
We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software
Fucking retards.