> You may just be cheap, Reco. I'm willing to pay for what is not free
> when I deem it is worth my money to do so. YMMV.
Free Software is about freedom, not about money, nor about
technical advantages.
Freedom to run the software without having to accept some ridiculous EULA.
Freedom to share that software legally with whoever you fancy.
Freedom to get whoever you want to fix/improve that software.
Freedom to share those fixes/improvements with whoever you fancy.
You don't need to be a programmer to make use of any one of
those freedoms.
Free Software tends to have, as a consequence, various specific technical
features as well, tho it's not its main goal (it's typically the goal
of Open Source software, on the other hand):
- It usually costs nothing (since the buyer can share it with anyone).
- It often works even on old or non-mainstream systems.
- It can be well-integrated with distributions like Debian, rather than
having just a big blob that contains copies of libraries you probably
already have on your system.
- It's usually free of malware, since it's a bit more difficult to hide
it in source code than in a precompiled binary.
- It tends to be aimed at more technical-minded people, since these are
the people who can provide fixes/improvements, and those people most
often do so for their own benefit rather than for the benefit of
someone else.
- ...
Stefan
