Skinning but not Compensating

[James]

Lately I've been convicted of using Skins of which the authors have asked for donations. Given that I'm opposed to compensating these developers, I've finally come to the conclusion that I should not use their skins. So, at long last I'm back to the default skin and frankly it suits me just fine. I remember when the first skin author asked for a donation all of the uproar that occurred in the Mozilla community. Here was an open-source community and now this developer was asking to be paid for his work. It seemed to go against what Mozilla stood for but over time most developers have asked to be compensated with minimum donations. Well... I understand that they spend a great deal of time developing the skins and maintaining them. But the fact of the matter is: no one asked them to do this. Originally this was a work of pleasure for the authors; one that gave them the compensation of knowing that they contributed to the Mozilla project.

Whatever the feeling about this...my own is: if they ask for money, don't use their skin or extension. End of story. Use what is offered freely and of good will and leave the rest. I don't see Google asking for money to use their skins; granted I haven't looked lately but that had been the norm over there. Have things changed there as well?

What do the rest of you think?

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[James]

What? No responses? I thought for sure that this post would garner a few dissenting opinions OR perhaps some agreements. Must be a lazy Saturday afternoon.

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[Antony]

Firstly, when I first read this (up to 2nd sentence), I thought you were talking about a product called "Skins", or talking about human skin. My bad. Well, you have to excuse that I don't speak English.

Anyhow, back to your question (which I assume you were referring to browser skin/theme). Personally, I don't mind things like donationware, as long as "donation" is not compulsory. I don't see an issue that at bottom of the page (or somewhere) that includes a donation link. Users are not forced to donate, and if users like it and feel generous, the donation method is straightforward. I think that is much better than paid version (which users must pay before trying the skin/theme out).

As for those paid version, I don't think it would work that well in the browser skin/theme. However, I do pay for a few drawing/graphic/vector arts (.png or .svg) since I know I couldn't have made those myself, and the free ones are just not that suitable.

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