One basic problem is the the word "free" winds up confusing the issue between the gratis and libre meanings, and in this case it's libre. As others have pointed out, it's ok to charge for free software, and I'll add that gratis software is very often proprietary, and you are bound by the conditions of whatever license it's under..
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Excellent point.
This is a distinction I often neglect to make when the topic comes up (no doubt from laziness or perhaps, exhaustion).
Andy:
...the fact that software held in common for principled reasons winds up whooping proprietary ass on grounds of quality is delicous.
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It does melt in your mouth.
A little while ago I was consulting at a utility firm.
>From a security point of view (both border security
and internal access control), their network was quite
the friggin mess. Auditing season was upon them and
even very comfortable corner office dwellers
understood that a failure of NERC, FERC, Sarbanes
Oxley and Thor knows how many other audits (after the
previous two years' failures) would result in missed
payments on mortgages and Audis.
What to do?
A budget was hastily gathered and software tools were evaluated for purchase. Under consideration was some Microsoft last-minute-in-the-basement-at-Redmond toss together that cost a bundle and other proprietary "enterprise" widgets price tagged at north of 30 thousand.
I suggested Nessus. I said, "a well equipped desktop running Linux and Nessus with Lightning for scheduling and reporting to give execs warm dictatorial feelings of control would be just the thing for internal triage."
The answer was no; Nessus didn't cost a million dollars so there was no way it was any good.
I loaded a grandfatherly but still virile laptop with Mepis Linux, installed Nessus, performed scans, created detailed reports of vulnerabilities (did any of the Oracle DBAs change security defaults? the answer is no) and passed them along.
It took a little while but soon it was clear to just about everyone that the very expensive, proprietary products did not out perform the OSS tool (in fact, they were often quite a bit less robust).
The glitzy lunchtime celebration with the CIO a year later after they happily passed their audits (to "show his appreciation to the team") was interesting. "Who'd have thought" he mused "that free software could be so good?"
Yes, who indeed?
.d.
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I'm sending the two of you to hell to take more lessons from your dead teacher!
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