Free stuff pays for itself with tricky in-app purchases, or tricky sell-your-data. In the beginning software couldn't really sell well above 99 cents, and now most software is free. and vice versa.įor apple, they can drive the cost of software to zero. So the price of gas goes down, the sales of cars goes up. "A complement is a product that you usually buy together with another product. Because apple is a hardware manufacturer, their app store makes software a complement. > Commercial software is adapted to the needs of the greatest number of people who will pay for it "I'm just a regular guy and I want to get my stuff done, but these programs are doing stuff I can't stop." I have had this conversation with "most people" a number of times. For example, what deficiencies does Elementary OS have compared to Windows? I use GIMP all the time, and I have much easier time getting around it than Photoshop.Īlso, would like to hear more about what specifically needs to be fixed on Linux. GIMP and Libre Office are both excellent piece of software that work perfectly fine. I also disagree that open source applications are in any ways horrible. This is a good combination since it provides commercial funding for the project, but also ensures that the users can always fork it if it and move it in a different direction from the original developers. There are plenty of companies making money from open source products. It's also a false dichotomy to claim that software is either commercial or open source. However, they have no power to do anything since they just have to follow whatever the current trend is, or find a new piece of software to use. And a lot of the time the changes either have absolutely no value for me, or they're actually detrimental to my workflow.Īnd clearly I'm not alone, because every time a major version change happens with popular commercial products a lot of users will complain about it. This has been the case with literally every piece of commercial software I've ever used. So, if you invest in a piece of software, then it's very likely going to continue evolving to stay profitable and chase whatever new fads happen to be. My whole point is that what people pay for changes over time. Microsoft even uses DMCA to prevent users from doing customization. Meanwhile, users of Windows or MacOS have very little choice but to continue adjusting to the ways Apple and Microsoft choose to evolve the desktop. There are now many flavors of GNOME all catering to different workflows, and users don't have to compromise their preferred way of doing things to chase how GNOME is evolving. Even when projects become abandoned, they can be picked up again by new teams.Įvolution of GNOME is a great example of this. Projects can also be easily forked and taken in different directions by different groups of users. Projects can survive with little or no commercial incentive because they're often developed by the users who themselves benefit from these projects. On the other hand, open source has a very different dynamic. Instead of the product being adapted to your needs, it's you who has to adapt to the way the product evolves, or spend the time investing in a different product. This is a bad situation to be in as a user since you have little control over the evolution of a product that you rely on. And if a company fails to do that, then it will die and the software will stopped being developed. This necessarily means that the product has to continue evolving to chase what's currently in vogue. Commercial software has to constantly chase profit for the company to stick around. No matter how great a commercial piece of software might be, sooner or later it's going to either disappear or change in a way that doesn't suit you. I've come to realize that open source is the only type of software worth investing into.
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