Are You Served?
Society which is passive is accustomed to being served.
If you want to download an operating system, then it is assumed that someone will upload one.
For many people, advocacy of Free software and GPL enforcement are assumed to be happening. It is somebody else's problem. The FSF does a lot of work and occasionally asks people to join.
Activists are a lot more proactive and they do things that are hard, even if they don't get paid for it.
In the case of GNU/Linux distros (most of which are made by volunteers), the passion driving them is typically ideological. For some it's a sense of accomplishment that comes with a complex technical task.
To me, personally, exposing corruption and wrongdoing is a passion - enough to prepare ~200 pages of legal documents in a short time frame or write 5,000+ articles about the EPO in spite of persistent threats.
Society is, collectively, always being served by people whose driving passion is not monetary. Some recognise this. Some do not. This week we plan to write about the EPO, having done the majority of the legal work and started extensive backups (since last night). █
