Should all software be free?

A lot of people, especially from Open Source community and computer geeks, believe that software should be free to everyone (and commercialized software is the source of evilness in the world!).

Well..I'm just thinking from a software developer standpoint here. It's cool and hell lot of fun to do an open source project and make it freely available on the web. But building and maintaining a solid* piece of software isn't always free, is it? There are also questions on quality and commitment as well.

Please share with me your opinions on this.

note: by saying 'solid' here I mean, the bugs are
minimized, there are usability testing, the software doesn't crash your and other's systems, and
you can really use it to do some good.

 **Update**

As a response to Simon's comment, for this blog entry, "free" means that the software can be downloaded and used for both personal and commercial purposes without time limit and purchasing. The software can be either open source or close source. It can be a complete product, a patch, an extension, or a framework.
 

Posted on: May 05, 2007

Posted by: teera

Category: Love to code

Permanent link to this entry

Comments:

You may well want to research the use of the word "free" in this context - it isn't about not paying, and consequently there is no inherent impact of professional-quality development taking place. Personally I am convinced the collective development enabled by software being liberated is very valuable - otherwise I wouldn't be advocating OpenSolaris, OpenJDK, OpenSSO/OpenID, NetBeans and all the rest of Sun's portfolio be liberated in this way.

Posted by Simon Phipps on May 05, 2007 at 06:11 PM PDT #

It's a tough call to venture up a guess whether I am alone on my opinions or not.. But here goes. I believe all software should be free, but all software should offer paid support. I believe "Open Source" strategies can, and do hold a very important part in the development of software. Not all software can be spread platform or architecture-wide so open-source allows a diverse spectrum which normally couldn't even be touched with a standard "paid" developer network. For something of "Enterprise" level software, of course the developers should be paid, and I believe that a support staff, offering support and thus patches for those customers would feed the development of the software. 'Patches' should also be free, but of course the priority scale should be set toward the levels and occurances from the paid support. After all, businesses want support. They need someone to turn to when something goes wrong, not all businesses can hire a genious for 20 different specializations. Sometimes just one admin is available. I also do not believe closed source is evil, simply those developers feel the need to hide behind the past, because opensource is not something widely understood, nor is it as a concept very forthcoming because of the legalities and curiousities beyond it. Anyone who says they can build better code closed source, than others do open source are uneducated twits. It reminds me of the movie about drug running.. POS 51 or whatever. It's a tough world to play in the business game, and it's even harder to explain to people that the income could be exponential on something that is "free".

Posted by Christopher S. Frost on May 05, 2007 at 09:56 PM PDT #

This is by far the best-phrased question I have seen. Free or not free, solid or not solid, quality and commitment or lack of such. The first and the rest are not really related (as evident by Apple's decidedly non-solid X server, with low quality and lack of commitment, but arguably non-free).

Posted by Ambrose on May 05, 2007 at 10:10 PM PDT #

A debate is raging on the 'net these days as to whether all software, music and digital content should be free.

http://www.devtopics.com/should-all-software-be-free/

Posted by DevTopics on January 31, 2008 at 07:26 AM PST #

Is commercial software the most evil thing in the world? It is not; it is not evil enough. The most evil thing in the world is probably DRM. DRM works by the most undemocratic principle of guilty-by-assumption: that is, you are assumed to be a criminal unless proven otherwise, with no chance of appeal. You are completely not trusted for anything, and they can turn against you any time to destroy your data. To allow DRM in the democratic world, with the backing of the law, even during times allegedly against terrorism, is absolutely unfathomable.

Posted by Ambrose on January 31, 2008 at 08:39 AM PST #

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