Would you pay for free software?

[KernelOverlord]

Check this out - OOoFf

Now as Open Office and firefox are free downloads, also regularly on Cover Cds and cross platform anyway - why would anyone pay for them????

has someone completely lost the plot???? - rofl

[xper]

He (Robertson) is just after money.

Check this also:

http://www.msfn.org/comments.php?shownews=10720

I wonder what happened to open (free) source?

[KernelOverlord]

The Codecs were part of Microsofts out of court settlement with Linspire (formerly Lindows). They paid Linspire $20m, plus I think it was a 4 year license to the codecs, in return Linspire had to surrender the Lindows Inc domain and name to Microsoft. So i suppose they are free to use them as they see fit, but why would anyone buy software that is freely available?? I also think they are attempting to mislead people into believing that Open Office is as good as MS office, OOo is okay but MS Office is the undesputed best suite available.

[Synapse]

WTF?!

I'm on www.Openoffice.org right now downloading OpenOffice.org... I don't see why they're charging money for it... especially the bit at the top that has the 49.95 then an X through that showting the new price as 29.95... i mean... whats the point.... you can download both tools freely. but i guess this is to try to help support both OpenOffice and Firefox...

[KernelOverlord]

WTF?!

ROTFLOL!! Yup that was my reaction

Provided the money is going towards Mozilla and OOo projects an dthat was declared then fine, however I believe this is about perceived value. ie charge for something and its gotta be good, nothing thats free is any good. If thats the case its an excercise in deception as far as Im concerned.

[prathapml]

MS Office is the undisputed best suite available.

Think again. You don't make any money from your Home PC, would you pay the price for a license of MS-Office for your home? And I'm sorry to say, 12-year old kids who use word/powerpoint for school projects, most certainly can't afford to buy MS-Office. Shall I conclude that you support piracy?

why would anyone buy software that is freely available??

Because they don't have the computer skills to download/install/learn/use it.

I wonder what happened to open (free) source?

This is a point that has been clarified by Open Source communities many times. Free here stands for free as in freedom, and not "free beer". Free means the freedom to modify source code according to your requirements. Actually, even if you charge a million dollars for firefox installation, nobody can accuse you of a crime, for the below reason.

Now as Open Office and firefox are free downloads, also regularly on Cover Cds and cross platform anyway - why would anyone pay for them????

When you pay for that package, you are not paying for the software. You are in fact paying for the *SERVICE* - paying for the skills of the person installing it for you, or paying for the fact that you got it in an easy-use box (instead of waiting for download).

WTF?!

.... you can download both tools freely. but i guess this is to try to help support both OpenOffice and Firefox...

Exactly. Either you willingly donate money to them, or they have to find ways to feed themselves. Just for a moment, let's keep the point of salaries aside. Isn't the time you spent on making your unattended XPCD valuable? Now if I said that you have to give it to me freely, simply because you yourself did not spend money on licenses for it, I'd be speaking ridiculous. Because, you know that you spent a lot of brain-power, time (which could have been more fun if you had instead sat and watched TV), and money (on internet-access charges ) on that CD. If you gave me that CD, you'd say, "Pay me for the service that you get, out of this."

If I'm happy with the price, I'd pay, and if not - I'd just look to somewhere else.

You can't just subsist on love and air and good-will alone, can you? You need money to bring food on your plate. As simple as that.

Sorry if this seems like an intrusion, but I just had to set things in the correct perspective. I hate to see it when people are blindly pro-MS or anti-MS.

[Famer]

Prath thats a **** good answer. the xp cd that we use is free the linux cd that you brought out of best buy is free every program is free your paying for the service that they M$ ect give you, and the license in the box is what cost 400 bucks when you talk about office2003 no the 5cd's.

[KernelOverlord]

prathapml

Okay I can see where your coming from, however with due respect, what I would say is that when I talk about the best suite I am talking about functionality, I have (Licensed) MS office, I also have Star Office (licensed) and Open office (GPL). I can assure you that MS Office is by far more functional than either of the competitors. Open office is fine for basic word proccesing and Spreadsheets etc, Star is better but the best is definitely MS Office. I use office packages for approx 10 hours per day, 5 days per week, and consider myself an Excel power user, Im pretty confident that I know a good Office Suite when I use it..

ps - incidentally I do not support piracy -

[prathapml]

when I talk about the best suite I am talking about functionality

Pay the OpenOffice/Mozilla developers, and see them get motivated and beat proprietary productivity suites (or browsers) on all counts.

Side-Benefit: Your documents' own future is secured too, because open-source does not function on the basis of orders coming from the top (which tell you to drop support for older versions). Also, all web-developers get a level-playing field, if there were no special info reserved to be divulged only to a paying customer.

Tell me, to what extent will you do things for me, if you don't have the incentive of cash at the other end of the dark tunnel? Also, your time is not all that much worthless - I mean, would you rather be working (trying to make a living), or would you rather be stuck in a traffic jam in front of the United Nations building?

Sorry if I come across as blunt, but not everybody can afford "the best" suite. Moreover, the IT industry happily has a concept of "good enough". When IE became "good enough" it trounced Netscape. When the PC was "good enough", mainframes went into oblivion. For that matter, windows and MS-office weren't always "The Best" - they took over the market, at a time when CTOs felt Microsoft solutions were "good enough" as far as price/value went. And so on.... "best" does not matter if there's something attractive about the "good enough" competitor.

What you got to know about the concept of "free software" is this:

They work to free you from the bondages of being locked-in to proprietary software manufacturers. They do it as an additional job, simply "for the love of it". If people are interested in joining the swelling party, they can - and if they don't like it, just pass it by!

And to remember:

While money is still required to exist in living form as a human on earth, the key difference between a proprietary firm, and the free-community is this-

Its an obligation to stock-holders and to its founders, that the closed-source firm expands business, improves bottom-lines, and strengthens hold on market share (by any means possible, including lock-in/monopoly). Whereas proponents of free software require money too, but not so much as to become an over-riding consideration to the detriment of people that rely on them for software.

Open-Source never claimed to wipe out hunger, nor to wipe your tears. Their only objective is to have the presence of choice in the market - to see that you can modify software and share source-code, to ensure that you be more productive by not having to re-invent the wheel when there's already a base to build on. (If you *OWN* the base as _private_ non-public code, you are not restricted from charging any amount of money you want in return for transferring it. And similarly, if you're offering services based around free-software, there's no law specifying that you should not specify any fee in-lieu of services offered)

[mark]

Ignorance and/or greed play a factor in this also. Over the past ten years I have used computers to a small degree and in that time I have gotten off CD's or downloaded many free, share or trial programs. Many of them I have saved to CD's. Don't use 95% of them and haven't even looked at most. Over the past year, I have become more informed about where a lot of these programs come from. Usually a small handful of individuals have written and put together a program and in larger cases like suites and OS's, it's many people. I never really understood who it was that wrote these things and how great an effort went into them. So I was guilty of ignorance and because there is something there for 'free' I am also guilty of greed (look back at the 95% part). In the past three months, I have happily donated to 5 services rendered. I don't begrudge those that can't pay. I hope the free stuff will eventually put them in a position to donate to these things themselves someday.

@Prathapml

Pay the OpenOffice/Mozilla developers, and see them get motivated and beat proprietary productivity suites (or browsers) on all counts. yes.gif

True and it seems to me that the free stuff is 'better' than the paid for stuff. As an example, someone suggested to me to use CDBurnerXP Pro because I had trouble with EasyCD Creator and I had also had problems with or didn't like Nero and Jukebox. CDBurnerXP Pro slapped the other three silly and it's still in beta form. Now, I am happy to 'pay' for free stuff, but I'll give it a test run first.

[Doggie]

lol who would pay for it anyways, considering the free label

[CoffeeFiend]

Ms office may be a bit better, but remember that 90% of ppl use 10% of it's features (open/save/print and probably just font changes). It's a pretty good alternative in a lot of cases. Firefox too is free, and it's the best browser around imho (followed by Opera).

They may be free, but I don't mind paying a few $ to support their development. It's sabing your from a very expensive ms office license, and firefox is saving a lot of people from having to get their PCs fixed because of a lot of scum on the web... That's a few hundred of $ saved, some people don't mind contributing to the products. (I wouldn't pay for a 3rd party "box of freeware" though)

[phoenix_nf]

BTW free ?? arnt you downloading it using the net and are'nt you paying for the net (and tel line especially Dialup users).

so its not absolutely free.

but who cares as long as you can get the full thing without shelling out cash to the company.

[Zxian]

I think that this is a really interesting thread and that people need to stay open about the subject. This could easily turn into a subject that makes people very angry, so if you ever get upset about anything that people say, just take a deep breath and try to understand where they are coming from (like Kernel did a few posts back).

Onto my two cents.

I do agree with the points made about the incentive to do more work when there is a cheque coming in the mail because of it.

As for piracy, I think that the major problem with the piracy of MS Office (for example, since it's already been mentioned) is the fact that most people who go out and buy a computer don't know about the alternatives. (This may have been what DL was getting at with "ignorance") For most students at my university, the Student and Teacher Edition of MS Office (includes 3 licenses) is available for $200 CAD. For what most people do with Word (write essay after essay), they could do that just as easily with OpenOffice or another similar program. However, no-one ever tells these students that they can find such a vast variety of tools online for free (by this I mean open source or freeware, not piracy, that's a different matter that I'm not going to get into here). I completely agree with the fact that most people never look past the toolbars that are available and see that the MS Office suite was actually developed for (guess what) the office environment.

I think that the creators of open-source/freeware (or freeware versions) would get much more support from the public if they were to advertise a little bit more. I understand that this costs money to do (as with anything), but if companies such as Sygate were to sell their firewall (Pro edition) right beside the endless copies of Norton products in Future Shop, then people would at least know the name Sygate, and if they were interested, they could look up Sygate on the web and see that they have a free edition of their firewall available. Saving $100 is appealing to just about anyone who is in their right mind. Not only would this provide Sygate with a better market share, but it would also cut into the (near) dominance that Norton has on the security market (don't get me started on this, every computer that I see sold in stores comes with a trial version of NAV and Norton products are all I see when it comes to AV and firewalls). More competition drives prices down, which is good for all of us as well.

That's a pretty good little blurb for now. I'll come back and add a bit more when I don't have to sleep becuase of a final tomorrow...