Companies aren’t making squat from happy fans donating a token amount to show support of the software. Everything adjacent to the open source software is profitable (enterprise sales, support contracts, hardware, corporate sponsors/funding, and so forth), but you’re going to have a really hard time selling something to consumers when they can just as easily get it for free.
Might be a hot take but it’s also justified to try and make money from software development that is not prefatory
It’s not illegal to make business with open source software
It’s not illegal, but it’s not profitable.
Companies aren’t making squat from happy fans donating a token amount to show support of the software. Everything adjacent to the open source software is profitable (enterprise sales, support contracts, hardware, corporate sponsors/funding, and so forth), but you’re going to have a really hard time selling something to consumers when they can just as easily get it for free.