Stallman's reasoning wasn't flawed (at least, not in the respect you state). Corporations are simply a group of humans. I don't think there's a good argument to be made that humans should have a right to X, but suddenly lose that right when they get together as a group.
> Further, I would argue that providing megacorporations with unpaid labor is deeply misguided, if not actually unethical itself.
Nobody is "providing megacorporations with unpaid labor". People are making an effort to put something out there for the benefit of the entire human race, and if that includes corporations that's fine. Not one person is harmed if Amazon takes my open source project and uses it to turn a profit, even if they make it into closed source. My project remains freely available for the benefit of all, just as it was before Amazon used it. So who exactly has been harmed? Not me, I'm in the same state as I was before. Not my (non-Amazon) users, they are in the same state as they were before. Not Amazon, of course. If every single person is no worse off or even better off than before, I don't see how you can argue that the corporate users are doing something unethical. It seems to me that really this isn't about ethics, but is about "we don't like those icky people" masquerading in pretty sounding language.
> tl;dr Nobody should go broke to enrich Bezos in their spare time...
Nobody should go broke to make open source software, period.
> Further, I would argue that providing megacorporations with unpaid labor is deeply misguided, if not actually unethical itself.
Nobody is "providing megacorporations with unpaid labor". People are making an effort to put something out there for the benefit of the entire human race, and if that includes corporations that's fine. Not one person is harmed if Amazon takes my open source project and uses it to turn a profit, even if they make it into closed source. My project remains freely available for the benefit of all, just as it was before Amazon used it. So who exactly has been harmed? Not me, I'm in the same state as I was before. Not my (non-Amazon) users, they are in the same state as they were before. Not Amazon, of course. If every single person is no worse off or even better off than before, I don't see how you can argue that the corporate users are doing something unethical. It seems to me that really this isn't about ethics, but is about "we don't like those icky people" masquerading in pretty sounding language.
> tl;dr Nobody should go broke to enrich Bezos in their spare time...
Nobody should go broke to make open source software, period.