Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith)
What-is-the-catch asks: Why are open source apps free - even commercial distros like Ubuntu? Why do coders put in so much work for free?
DistroWatch answers: Reading this question made me sad as it was a reminder how much commercial software companies, along with their propaganda, have poisoned our culture. The question seems to assume the norm is for developers to create software with the intent of selling it and that there isn’t benefit in making something for reasons other than acquiring money. In the software development culture, the reverse has typically been true.
For most of the history of modern computers, it has been fairly common for software developers to share their creations (often with the source code) free of charge. There are several reasons for this. Some developers are academics and share their code the same way other academics publish papers and share methodologies. Other developers want to solve a problem which will benefit from having multiple participants. Such endeavours include creating a large application (such as LibreOffice), setting a new standard (like Wayland or X11), or coordinating multiple nodes (as you would with network time synchronization). There are other reasons developers might publish their code for free, ranging from showing off their skills, wanting to better humanity, or creating something for the joy of creating.
Whatever the motivation, it has historically been common for software authors to share their creations with others, either publicly or with their peers. Commercial software, while it has existed in parallel, has not necessarily been where the interesting, capable, or fun programs have originated. The GNU userland and compiler, the BSDs, MINIX, Linux, and X11 all grew out of a culture of open development and developers freely sharing their source code. Often times, even when commercial software was being marketed, the software itself wasn’t necessarily what was being sold. A lot of the time it was support for the software (and the systems on which it ran) which was being sold. Linux companies, such as Canonical, Red Hat, and SUSE, have continued this practice of selling support rather than focusing on selling specific applications.
These days it is typically the practice of companies to present software as a commodity, something to be developed expensively, packaged with hype, and sold as if it were a rare resource. Companies such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft stuff unwanted features into their platforms in an effort to make it seem as though they’re creating something of value which people should purchase. They’d like you to forget that they’re spending millions of dollars to put a shiny face on information and capabilities that thousands of programmers around the world can (and do) develop and share for free.
Why do open source developers do what we do? Because we can, because it’s helpful to the human race, because it’s fun, because it’s interesting, because we like to show the world what we can do, because coding is a delightful creative outlet, because we want to be in control of our own machines. Because we don’t want some corporation to overcharge for a product and then drop support for it when they want to sell us the next version. Being an open source developer keeps the control of our systems in the hands of the people who use the software, not in the hands of people who are looking to squeeze money out of our wallets.