Do you still pay for software?

[Klaatu]

For me one of the greatest merits of freeware, particularly FOSS is
choice. I can choose what program to use and how to use it. I am not
bound by the terms of the EULA and can (with open source software), if
I have the skill, modify it to work the way I want it to work.

While I use a fair amount of FOSS myself, for the commercial software I use
I don't consider myself to be bound by anything in any EULA.

 

[Toke Eskildsen]

The goal for a Freeware author is to create a program that
performs the desired functions.

Commercial software may be designed to meet a different goal - to
create a product that produces the highest possible profit for the
creator - functionality may be sacrificed; programs may be bloated
to make them more saleable . . .

That's a bit too black & white for my taste. One could argue that the
goal for a freeware author is to create a program that performs
whatever functions _he_ desires, while the goal for the shareware
author is to create a program with whatever functions his _users_
desire.

 

[Beck]

Hi,

I'm writing a story about free software, and the reasons why people
still pay for propietary software when there's so much good free
software available now.

I'm particularly keen to speak to people, preferably in the UK, who
never pay for software and run a completely 'free' set-up (not
necessarily including the operating system).

However, if you have any views to share on the merits of free software
versus commercial products, I'd be delighted to hear from you.

If you do wish to contribute, please post a message on this thread or
email me at the address given.

Many thanks.

5 years ago I was a bit of a software leecher. I used to download the latest
Paint Shop Pro or whatever just because I could.
Then I saw a bright light down a tunnel which guided me towards free stuff.
LOL
I now use *only* freeware software.
I have found in some respects, freeware is better for my needs than paid for
programs. Alot of the time, big programs like Photoshop, psp or whatever
tend to be memory or cpu hogs and use a hell of alot of system resources
that could be put to better use. I don't need the advanced features of the
larger programs. I just need simplicity. So for image editing I would use
Irfanview which suits my needs.

 

[Susan Bugher]

Some authors do a better job than others of removing their early
freeware versions from servers.

But the freeware world has a secret weapon in Susan Bugher who can
track down an old copy of even the most obscure freeware. And
frequently does so. Her success rate is amazing.

The expert searchers in ACF find the toughies (I find the easy ones).

Susan
--
Posted to alt.comp.freeware
Search alt.comp.freeware (or read it online):
http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search?q=+group:alt.comp.freeware
Pricelessware & ACF: http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
Pricelessware: http://www.pricelessware.org (not maintained)

 

[The Six Million Dollar Man]

Many thanks for all of your comments, they are much appreciated.

Can I ask in general if people trust Freeware as much as commercial
products? Do you find it as stable and is support available if you need
it?

Thanks

I trust the Freeware that I find listed on Pricelessware
http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/ , Nonags
http://www.nonags.com/mirrors.html , Snap Files
http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/freeware.html , and John Hood's site
http://www.jhoodsoft.org/ . These programs generally tend to be just as
stable as their commercial alternatives. Unfortunately many Freeware
programs tend to lack full documentation and/or support. Happily most
are intuitive enough that the user is able to figure them out and begin
using them right away without any major problems.

I would rather try a Freeware or a Shareware program before purchasing a
commercial product. Like most people I would rather find a free or cheap
solution to my needs than spend hundreds of dollars on something that
provides far more than I will ever use or need. Also Freeware and
Shareware allow me to try several products before chosing which one I
want. Imagine what it would cost to do that with Microsoft Office, Word
Perfect Office Suite, and Sun's Star Office.

 

[Mark Carter]

Can I ask in general if people trust Freeware as much as commercial
products?

Assuming it's genuine freeware, and not some kind of malware, then I see
no reason not to "trust" freeware. Businesses like Microsoft are
notoriously predatory in their behaviour - not people I could trust at
all. Not long ago, Sony were installing rootkits on machines; which
kicked up a big stink.

Do you find it as stable

Mostly OK. At least as good as anything else.

and is support available if you need
it?

Public support forums may be available. Support is an issue that is
vastly inflated by the likes of Microsoft. If you want support from
businesses, then you have to pay. Since most people don't do this
anyway, I don't see that there is much of an issue. Chances are that you
are more likely to get responses from a freeware author than a
commercial enterprise.

Many years ago I encountered a bug in MS Office. I 'phoned up Microsoft
to report it, and they wanted to charge me money. I was thinking: hold
on, I'm reporting a bug to them, I'm certainly not going to pay money
for the privilege.


When you look at a page on the web, there's probably a better than even
chance that it was served using Apache, a free web server. I run two web
sites, none of which use commercial servers, let alone Microsoft's IIS
thingy.

Why don't you actually try using some freeware? Download Firefox:
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/
Type Ctrl-T to get some nice tabs going. Take a look at some of the
enhancements that you can get for Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/?application=firefox
Download AdBlock, and see how much better things are.

Try downloading FreeCommander:
http://www.freecommander.com/index_en.htm
and excellent dual-paned file manager that makes copying and pasting
much easier than using Explorer.

Try it - it's free!

 

[Maynard Man]

I've replied to sender for you, if your mail address is not munged, you
should have it now.

 

[Craig]

Hi,

I'm writing a story about free software...

Two questions;

1) are you actually a journalist by profession and,
2) who is paying for this story?

tia,

-Craig

 

[Mark Carter]

Two questions;

1) are you actually a journalist by profession and,
2) who is paying for this story?

-Craig

O, where's the trust in this world.

Having said that, I was wondering myself if there were some "angle" to
all this. Perhaps, like me, you were reminded of that episode where a
"journalist" went to interview Tanenbaum, author of Minix, hoping that
he would accuse Linus Torvalds of stealing his ideas.

 

[Luis Cobian]

Hi,

I'm writing a story about free software, and the reasons why people
still pay for propietary software when there's so much good free
software available now.

Hello!

This is trully interesting and I'd would very much like to read the result
of your research. Will this be published on some magazine?

About the theme of your research, I for use a lot of payware, but I make no
difference between free and payware. If there is a good program I would like
to use, I do. If it is free, I download it and use it. If it is payware, I
buy a license and often and don't even think about finding a freeware
replacement. This business is a job, and those guys have to earn their well
deserved money too. Some people talk about payware like if it were the pest
and look down to good software just because a name like "Microsoft" or
"Adobe" is on it. We are talking about (often) excellent software here.
Often those people are not developers and don't understand the hard work,
time and dedication that software design means and they forget that there is
no free food or free beer out there, but they expect that there only must
exist free software.

About quality, often it doesn't matter what kind of software it is. There is
excellent freeware and payware and horrible freeware and payware. In the
enterprise world, payware is often overrated IMO, just because a lot of
bosses aout there think that a USD500 program must necesary be better than a
free one that does the same think. This way of thinking if often typical of
people without much technical knowlege: managers and stuff. Between more
initiated or technical people there is the oposite thinking: some freeware
is very overrated just because you got the myth of the free community and
Open Source (just because is Open it must necesarly result in better
software, and yadda yadda). I would say that the true is there between the
two extrems as always...

What does the future has for us? I would guess that the 2 forms will
co-exist for ever. There will always exist freeware. Not everthing must have
a price and it's nice to give to the community too. But there will always be
the need for payware. And there will always be persons and companies which
do both.

Regards

 

[Mark P.]

I'm particularly keen to speak to people, preferably in the UK, who
never pay for software and run a completely 'free' set-up (not
necessarily including the operating system).

I run the office of a small and poor charity (not UK based though).
All software there is freeware, except the OS and the programme which
came with the cdr-burner (there is a good free alternative for the
latter).

Mark P.

 

[Franklin]

Oh, lucky you, you've never seen Fedora, Slackware, or similar
Bloated Linuz Distros...

Opps, sorry I now live almost entirely in the world of Windows
these days. I have to leave you Linux boys to your own OS.
Apologies for overlooking you.

Of course there can be bloated Windows freeware (the recent
Mozilla was way too big) but there are nothing like as many
freeware examples as there are of commercial software.

On the contrary, some bloated commercial applications (such as
Adobe's Acrobat Reader or MS Word) can be found significantly
slimmed down in similar freeware applications.

 

[Mr Big & Busy (formerly Franklin)]

I agree.
I find freeware is aimed to do one function, which is why I end
up using 2 or more freeware products to achieve my end result.
This can be time consuming and laborious.

Time consuming and laborious might be slighty overstating the extra
work involved.

Payware products tend
to do this in one sweep. I have a combination of free and pay
because I like to do things once rather than mess around. I have
a good social life, so I don't have the time to sit in front of
my pc all the evening and weekends, I'm just not that boring.

Heh heh! Is that what you say? Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

Although I'm like most people and will take something for
nothing where I can, I also don't have an issue paying for
something that saves me time. I would also suggest that some
people are just tight fisted. It hurts them to put their hand in
their pockets. You only have to read some of the signatures here
with things like "no payware or shareware for me please". You
can tell a lot about a poster from their signature!

Check my sig. Heh!


your, Mr Big
(Speak to my secretary if you want to comment.)

 

[Franklin]

Newer versions are no longer free.....
and you are acting against the will of the developer most of the
times, since they say (most of the times) in the agreement that
distibutuion without liscence from him/her is not allowed.
You may say that you are not one who is distibuting but only
downloading from the source.
You can tell that to the record companies who are attacking with
lawsuites downloaders of media through P2P networks.

Technically it is still stealing.. why not crack or hack a
commercial product then?

Perhaps it is to say to yourself that you are not a thief?

I am just speculating.. I use old freeware myself that I have
stored on cdroms,
or find from third sites/mirrors on the internet.

I am amused to see that no one is commenting on the free energy
part of my post.

I didn't comment on that free energy bit because I thought you
were ranting. If not then it seems to be in the wrong group.

 

[Susan Bugher]

Susan Bugher wrote:

That's a bit too black & white for my taste. One could argue that the
goal for a freeware author is to create a program that performs
whatever functions _he_ desires, while the goal for the shareware
author is to create a program with whatever functions his _users_
desire.

I was aiming for black and white - a major difference between Freeware
and payware.

Freeware authors *can* design to their own requirements. They can design
specialized programs that suit them *without* regard to the number of
potential users. OTOH many Freeware authors do seek input from the users
of their Freeware and incorporate requested features.

Payware authors are presumably hoping to appeal to a great number of
people. Freeware authors have more freedom of choice - Payware authors
are constrained by their wish to sell many copies of their programs.

Susan
--
Posted to alt.comp.freeware
Search alt.comp.freeware (or read it online):
http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search?q=+group:alt.comp.freeware
Pricelessware & ACF: http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
Pricelessware: http://www.pricelessware.org (not maintained)

 

[Franklin]

While I use a fair amount of FOSS myself, for the commercial
software I use I don't consider myself to be bound by anything
in any EULA.

PMFJI.

I can honestly say I have never ever read as much as a single EULA
except for the supremely trivial sort of statement which give me a
choice of two buttons. One button says I agree to everything the
developer wants to insist on and the other says cancel.

I just assume every EULA is full of severely onerous and horribly
restrictive terms saying things like I must die a terrible death
if I ever think about the author in an unpleasant way. All that
sort of thing.

 

[Franklin]

I've found a few instances where shareware better met my needs.

Without naming names:

Registry Editor
Text Editor
Antivirus
File Backup
Uninstall Manager
Downloader
File Manager

I have tested every known freeware equivalent to the above seven
programs and decided, due to their efficiency, the cost of these
seven was worth it to me.

I also have 125 freeware programs installed. About a dozen of
which I use frequently and the balance occasionally.

Come on Bob. I don't think you're even trying when it comes to
the keep up with the number of freeware progs installed.

I reckon at least half my 600 or so programs are freeware. I
asked about this here last summer but no one seemed much
interested. http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-2090023.php
And I can't possibly be the heaviest user/installer of freeware
compared to some of the heavy hitters here.


However, I would be interested to know which $$$ware text editor
or file manager beats the large range of freeware ones. And maybe
even even the reg editor as Resplendence has a truly nice freeware
one. Maybe your needs are a bit idiosyncratic.

 

[Susan Bugher]

I agree with what you say but I'm not sure about the "functionality may be
sacrificed" bit.
Surely without it, their product would not be marketable?

Just for openers what about apps that require registration?

Registration (and expiration of apps that require an annual payment) can
cause problems for legitimate users of the apps. Registration has
nothing to do with functionality - that programming is there for the
benefit of the author. So. . . extra headaches for the user, bloated
apps (think Symantec/Norton, Turbo Tax, Windows XP). . .

Susan
--
Posted to alt.comp.freeware
Search alt.comp.freeware (or read it online):
http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search?q=+group:alt.comp.freeware
Pricelessware & ACF: http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
Pricelessware: http://www.pricelessware.org (not maintained)

 

[Craig]

Just for openers what about apps that require registration?

Susan

To continue: what about payware apps which

~toss pop-ups ads on-screen which block view & functionality of app
~prevent doc-to-email (other than via company's server!)

You can thank Intuit & their QuickBooks Pro for these fine examples.

<grrrrrr>

-Craig

 

[Whirled Peas]

Many thanks for all of your comments, they are much appreciated.

Can I ask in general if people trust Freeware as much as commercial
products? Do you find it as stable and is support available if you need
it?

Thanks

With a few rare exceptions, I have usually found freeware support, at
least in the OSS field, to be better than the support you get from the
commercial software companies. You are generally communicating with
the developers who understand the workings of the program FAR better some
'tech support' operator who is reading from a script.