To clarify: the article contains advice about how to fund operations for plugin developers. I doubt that it is viable for all plugin developers to fund their operations off of documentation and services. I am just saying that we should be honest and express that funding the development directly will be needed and probably the only way to get it is donations. That's really all I am saying here.
One example is I was recently messing around with Space Engineers code. Keen software gives opens it up but doesn't mean you can just download the code and get the game for free
On the legal side, free software and open source could very well be considered sinonyms (if that makes sense). The actual difference is one of attitude and end-goals.
You cite 'open source' as something that you admire.
It's well known that 'free software' describes an attitude that the 'open source' crowd wasn't as keen to embrace, hence the subsequent linguistic wrangling.
I really don't see how this kind of linguistic wrangling helps. Instead it kind of diverts from my initial point and drives the discussion into nitpicking.
This is not true.
The word 'free' is used six times in the first paragraph to emphasise the point being made, then they really spell it out for you :
"This freedom is what makes the GNU GPL license so powerful and it is why it’s much more than 'open source'."