>the biggest reason they love open source is because it's "free" (meaning no cost), not the principles of software freedom nor the improved development methodology of open source.
I'm a cheapskate but that's still pretty weird to me. Open source software is free because the entire idea behind it is users don't get excluded. It's more about being accessible than not charging money.
There was a dual licensed HTML component that I was going to use at work but the commercial licensing conditions (not the price) were pretty bad. Per user licensing with a strict upper limit for both active users and the number of apps even though we don't know how many people are going to use the software and most users are only going to use it for one hour per month and we would probably integrate it into a library that will be automatically included in every of our applications to maintain consistency even if the commercial component is not actively being used in every project.
Paying $100/month or maybe a little more for a commercial license with few restrictions that I can just plop in would have been a no brainer but since I'd have to constantly play license tetris it's going to cost my company more time than the product is worth in the long run. It's not a lack money that forced me to go with an open source project that also happens to be free. It's the massive headaches caused by the commercial one.
My running hypothesis is that many people see open source as a way to avoid dealing with upstream developers.
If I "pip install" a package which brings in a lot of other packages, I don't need to have any relationship with any of those developers. It Just Works.
I don't have to know about their projects, find their web sites, read their calls for funding, learn their licensing options, etc. I don't have to worry about billing. It Just Works.
Even if the price is $100, the fact that it doesn't Just Work means the effective price is far higher.
I decided to focus on industrial customers who were used to software in the EUR ~5-20K/yr range (rather than the ~$1000/yr range) so the overhead costs are proportionally smaller. And why I try to make the code fit into the "Just Works" framework, eg, on Linux-based OSes:
> Open source software is free because the entire idea behind it is users don't get excluded. It's more about being accessible than not charging money.
The reason for the creator of the software to make it open source does not have to be the reason that the users decide to use it.
Even at work, I don't think a single person has ever had the source code of Redis, Postgres or even most of their NodeJS modules open on their machine. The reason they use it is because they can `apt/brew/npm install redis` and off they go. They wouldn't care at all if npm only installed binaries. Zero price enables this kind of easy distribution because every form of money transfer is more difficult (especially in corporate setting where you have to pay for it) than "not paying at all".
I'm a cheapskate but that's still pretty weird to me. Open source software is free because the entire idea behind it is users don't get excluded. It's more about being accessible than not charging money.
There was a dual licensed HTML component that I was going to use at work but the commercial licensing conditions (not the price) were pretty bad. Per user licensing with a strict upper limit for both active users and the number of apps even though we don't know how many people are going to use the software and most users are only going to use it for one hour per month and we would probably integrate it into a library that will be automatically included in every of our applications to maintain consistency even if the commercial component is not actively being used in every project.
Paying $100/month or maybe a little more for a commercial license with few restrictions that I can just plop in would have been a no brainer but since I'd have to constantly play license tetris it's going to cost my company more time than the product is worth in the long run. It's not a lack money that forced me to go with an open source project that also happens to be free. It's the massive headaches caused by the commercial one.