Ask HN: Why is the $0 hijacking of intellectual labor so normalized in OSS?

I’ve noticed a fascinating paradox in this community. We celebrate "disruption" and "innovation," yet we maintain a cultural dogma where individual's lifework is expected to be donated for $0. "Open Source" has become a polite euphemism for the legalized looting of independent inventions. We expect creators to sacrifice years of life-force, only for Big Tech to strip-mine the logic and patent the derivatives—effectively banning the original author from their own work. I’m curious about the collective ethics here: 1. The Cognitive Tax: If one requires an LLM summary to "verify" a non-perturbative logic, does that person truly qualify as a "contributor," or are they just an end-user of someone else’s cognitive sacrifice? 2. The "Hacker" Spirit: Since when did the spirit of hacking—understanding things from first principles—get replaced by the spirit of "I want this for free and I want it now"? I’m not interested in a charity model where the loudest influencer claims my years of work as their own overnight. I'd rather have a constructive dialogue on why we've normalized this parasitic transfer of value. Is the "community" built on shared growth, or just on the efficient consumption of outliers who don't have a legal department?

I agree, the world has indeed improved for those who consume. But I'm asking about the creators. Or does your 'constructive' worldview require the author's bankruptcy as a prerequisite for progress?