Because they are using YOUR components that YOU bought in order to facilitate use for themselves, which results in potential profit and cost-cutting for them. In other words, it's like someone hiring you but they ask you to bring your own computer to work, use your own tools to carry out things and they provide nothing. You can't compare it to merchandise because merch is produced by the team/company themselves (and guess what, the outsourced manufacturers get paid to produce said merch). Plus, by having it paid, one can help introduce a new kind of job or help people get more income on the side.Zynerji wrote: ↑03 Mar 2019, 20:03Why? the entire point is to support your favorite team. You buy hats, shirts, merchandise already. This would be very similar in that you donate a small percentage of computing power. You wouldn't be REQUIRED to participate, so why would you get paid?
We already have an example of how having such a "crowdsource" project free is detrimental - Google's ReCaptcha, the abomination of the current Internet. They use your time and energy to do develop their own product that will only generate profit for them. It's slave labour frankly and wastes people's time. I've stopped using Google Search now because during any sort of research where one is searching heavily it begins showing its BS captchas.
Anyway this is getting heavily OT and as others have mentioned, this isn't good overall and mafia-like elements quickly get in. Plus, the popularity or fanbase of a team should not decide who wins. I've always said this - reduce the computers and algorithms to make racing more pure.