"Society doesn't work that way" from the guy who says "the whole point of law is to guarantee outcomes".

Ok buddy. Why is tipping the analogous model? Do the economics fit at all? Why is it tipping that is teaching us about the economics of oss? I also don't give the grocery store extra money just for "kindness". Why not go with that one? You think an oss maintainer reflecting on someone making hundreds of millions with their work is analogous to a server waiting to see what you write down on the check? Is that it? Who is the business (not) paying the server in this case? The oss maintainer is both the emotionally manipulative server and the benefiting business owner? Because "exposure"? Or are you saying they are stupid for not acting more like a business in the first place, meaning the two should become the one? Why are you putting a human in front of me and making me come to some sort of pseudo-moral judgement? What does my contract say? Is that your point?

I just have to level with you and say your argument is deeply unimpressive. You also repeat maxims like "you're owed what you ask for" as if this is self evident. Then you call other people fools and say what other people can and can't do, all from this position of supposed hard-nosed knowledge of the the real world and how things work when it's pretty clear you have no idea what you're talking about. Trying to go from grandstanding about tipping culture (go off) to some self evident law about how humans should share rewards in something like oss is not obvious, despite your brilliant legal and economic insights.

And feeling bad is not something you can legalize your way out of. Another comment already touched on this. You don't seem to understand the point being made. No one is claiming there is a legal obligation or there was some company to company transaction. You know not everything in life is a contract, right? Morals and law are not the same. Your inability to acknowledge this basic fact feels pretty antisocial to me. I'm not really impressed by your shallow attempt at diagnosing society, or whatever your move from tipping to identity theft was supposed to prove... it seems to me underlying your replies is a resistance to feeling guilt. Not to psychoanalyze you but frankly, the degree to which you don't seem to understand how simple this is and instead seem to think this is some kind of emotional scam (why are you making me feel bad about giving you pennies on the dollar when the contract said it was free) makes me, at the risk of violating the HN equivalent of the Goldwater rule, simply wonder who hurt you.