He’s still the same sociopath as always, except now with a savior complex. Giving away all his money, is he? His foundation has been around 25 years and he still has $100b+ net worth. A single individual shouldn’t have that much power, and the fact that he still voluntarily wields it while virtue signaling affirms every negative opinion of him. Even if he were the benevolent billionaire his PR campaign would have us believe he is, such a net worth should be reserved for governments where it’s spread across multiple agencies that have checks and balances and are accountable to voters. I don’t trust any individual with that much power, though I’d trust any random person off the street over anyone ruthless enough to become a billionaire.

Yeah, that’s a good one, and I also enjoyed Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography. Stories like Jobs getting a bonus when Wozniak was able to design a board with fewer chips and then not mentioning the extra money to Woz are perfect examples of how sociopaths like Jobs and Gates operate. It’s sad that ruthless charlatans like them who exploit the true geniuses and innovators are allowed to accrue so much money and power in our society.

A great example of this is paid Blender add-ons. I love the concept that I can pay for software and not only have a perpetual license and free updates forever (usually), but also get the source code. I often call add-on operators from my own Python pipeline code for further automation, so being able to look at the source helps.

It’s definitely worth paying and supporting the devs as opposed to finding a copy online where someone has “exercised their GPL right to distribute”, because it’s usually an older version and you can’t ask the dev for help. A lot of add-ons also have assets that are copyrighted and can’t be distributed freely. Outside of Blender, most graphics software is closed-source and subscription-only. Those greedy bastards can all fuck off, and I’ll give my money to decent human beings instead.