Why is your Software Free

[Graham Leggett]

On 25 Mar 2010, at 11:51 PM, Cam KELLY wrote:

>   My brother speaks highly of your software and I have a question.
> Why is gnucash available for free and/or donation ? I have a limited
> understanding of the GNU Software License but if I understand
> correctly, you are not required by the license to make gnucash
> available "at-no-cost".
>
>   I am a software developer with mid-career experience (about 3
> years) and have read 'The Success of Open Source' by Steve Weber and
> other on-line commentaries at gnu.org. The police I worked with
> previously were leery of open-source software and I continue to
> transition to independent work : www.CambridgeSoftware.biz.

There are two components to the cost of software, the cost of  
developing it, and the cost of maintaining it. Over time, the cost of  
maintaining the software by far and away exceeds the cost of  
developing it.

The traditional "commercial" model is to sell you the software  
outright, however this doesn't cover the ongoing maintenance of the  
software, so the company needs to find a way to sell you the same  
software again and again. A common approach is to keep making  
arbitrary changes to the software to keep coming up with new products  
to resell, and this is really wasteful.

The open source model is based on a focus on recovering the  
maintenance cost instead of the development cost, so you'll find the  
key ways open source companies make money is through charging for  
ongoing support. Because there is no pressure to arbitrarily change  
software for change's sake to generate new sales, you'll find open  
source software is far more stable, changes far less frequently, and  
is as a result far less risky to rely on than traditional commercial  
software.

There is second economic incentive for open source, is that the  
authors of the open source software are credited directly for their  
work. Commercial companies generally prefer their developers to remain  
secret to prevent poaching of staff, but that's bad news for the staff  
themselves, whose contributions to software projects contributes to  
the reputations of the developers.

A further economic incentive for end users of software is the "fit" of  
the software application to their organisation. The chances of a given  
piece of software fitting the problem is very unlikely to approach  
100%, there is always a missing feature of place where the software  
has to be bent to fit. In the case of commercial software, the feature  
will have to be custom developed and negotiated by the company who  
produced the software originally, and this takes lots of time, lots of  
money, and the company can just say no. And for people without time or  
money, this can prove a dealbreaker. With an open source project, the  
end user has the source, and can develop their missing feature  
themselves, or by using skills on the open market, rather than being  
forced to use the skills of the company who control the commercial  
software.

A further significant economic incentive in the favour of open source  
is the quality of code. Open source software is visible warts and all,  
and the reputation of developers is tied into the quality of the code.  
Closed source code is hidden, allowing a multitude of sins to remain  
hidden.

Regards,
Graham
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