The ads serve as payment for those without the means or are just unwilling to pay and still get the same options as everyone else.

That’s an interesting perspective. The way I see it though, the cost you pay in advertising, besides program functionality, is time. No matter how much money Jeff Bezos gets, eventually he will die. Your time is precious. Advertising is a waste of time on an unfathomable scale. I think that most people don’t fully understand the tradeoff they’re making by giving their time to advertisements because we’ve been conditioned not to think critically about how we use our time. This allows capitalists to easily exploit people into doing tedious work for them, saving them time. A lot of people assume that there’s a whole life after the lights go out, and they’re wasting their time under the assumption that their time in the afterlife will be infinite.

If somebody can’t afford something you’re suggesting we exclude them?

Generally speaking, no. I brought up some specific examples of reasonable ways to monetize software:

• Custom feature request: you can pay the development cost for a large custom feature that becomes available to everyone. For example, let’s say I’m using an office software on x86-64, and I want the developers to port a version for ARM64 and help me deploy it on hundreds of Raspberry Pi’s. They’re probably not going to do that for free. Maybe someone else will do it, but if I need to make it happen, I’m willing to pay someone for their time! Ordinary bug fixes and feature requests for free customers would still be honored.

• Luxury features: for example, icon packs [1], custom colors [1], and extra fonts. For each item, this only includes those items which don’t affect accessibility and function; for example, it wouldn’t be cool to charge extra for a Sans-Serif font option, because Sans-Serif fonts are, generally speaking, easier for low-vision people to read. However, I don’t think there would be too much of an issue with charging for some Sans-Serif font as long a reasonable selection of them are installed for free [2]. The full functionality of the app should be available to all users, including and especially those who can’t afford to pay.

• Premium support for paying users: some users are going to require more support than others. For example, let’s say I want to deploy an office software on 1000 computers, and I want to get constant support for my users to transition to the software. In the current economic system, it absolutely makes sense to charge for that as a service under the assumption that, if you need that level of support, you can probably afford to pay for the required development time and manpower to take on such a large project and still have time to assist other users.

Frankly, I think that people who cannot afford to pay for the software should simply get it for free. You shouldn’t have to pay in any way, cash or otherwise. The dev isn’t going to get a transaction if I can’t pay for it; might as well just give it away. If you don’t, I’m totally going to steal it anyways. Those who can pay probably should, and I will do so once I get a non-zero income.

However, if you’re going to sell anything, I think it is least damaging to sell only those parts that users do not need to use the program. You shouldn’t sell any part of the program if you can avoid it, but if you can’t, sell the unimportant stuff.

I suppose that if the choice is exclusively between paying with cash and paying by watching advertisements, and that choice is immutably carved into the fabric of the universe, then I suppose that it makes sense to have a choice [3]. However, it is my entire point that these are not the only options. One choice could be to not pay and just get it for free. This is the choice pirates will make, including myself. Another could be to pay some other way, or make some less damaging subset of the program be the item you pay for. Someone more creative than me could probably devise a more interesting business model.

For someone that hates capitalism you’re sure good at preaching it.

I appreciate critiques like these, but I will reiterate that I have absolutely no income at the moment, so I would be locked out of all the things I proposed. I’m not going to advocate for my own oppression. I’ve come up with those specific examples of monetization schemes as the least damaging I could think of.

[1] If I remember correctly, Reddit tried a scam where they made the default icon obviously ugly and then charged for the one people want. Additionally, I understand that color schemes can be important for accessibility purposes, for example in the case of color blindness. My point is that there should be a reasonable amount of icons and theming to accomodate all users. Beyond that, it is least damaging to charge for additional cosmetic changes.

[2] This is a feature I would be more likely to pay for because I’m really fucking picky about fonts. I’m low-vision myself, but as far as reading is concerned most of the traditional fonts work well enough; they just look kinda crappy.

[3] In situations where these are imposed to be the only options, I elect not to use it. I’ve lost out on a lot of opportunities because of my opposition to advertisements, and more broadly capitalism!