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