document updated 16 years ago, on Apr 5, 2008
Why I prefer open source solutions:
- I use many different computers. Having to buy two licenses for two of my machines is silly; buying licenses for all of them would be impossible.
- Learning how to use an application is a personal time investment. Commercial software companies
can (and do) use this fact to their advantage, as leverage to force users to do things they'd otherwise not choose to do.
An open source license guarantees that the moment a maintainer pulls something like this, their project will be forked out from underneath them.
(note that this rule only comes into effect only for more-or-less equivalent products such as MSOffice / OpenOffice. When open source equivalents are substantially lacking (eg. GIMP vs. Photoshop), it's worth it to accept up-front that one will eventually have to learn the second package when it catches up)
- User communities that spring up around an application are playing an increasingly important role. IMHO, open source apps draw a larger percentage of their users to become active in the user community, and those members tend to be more productive as well.
- I'm a developer, and I do learn some things by reading modern real-world code.
- I like having the option to be able to submit a patch if something itches enough. (even if I rarely exercise it)
(there are many other reasons for using open source that others find convincing, these are just the ones I personally find most relevant)