Why is some software free?

Answer 1

I'm not sure how this is a math question... but there are many possible answers.

There is something called "Shareware" that they give you a sample of a larger program (usually games). The idea for this one is, you like it so much you share it with your friends (thus the name) and you all go buy the full version.

It could be packaged with something else, in which case the company packaging it most likely feels they'll get more sales from the both combined than one alone, and thus make more money.

In MMOs, the "Free-to-Play" concept is becoming more popular. The idea here is that they get a lot of people who can't afford to, or don't want to, pay a monthly subscription to play their game. Then they offer stuff for sale to the customers, who don't have to buy it to play and enjoy the game. The main thing here is they have many more people playing than without it, and some of those people *will* buy stuff. So they come out ahead in the long run than if they just charged a fee.

Or, the person who made the software could just want to give it away for some reason, and they're not trying to get rich off it. An example of this is Open Office. Usually, though, whoever either made or is selling the software has other software as well, and they're hoping if you liked their one product that was free, you'll go back to them and buy their other products.

Sometimes, the person just really doesn't care about making money off it.

As far my knowledge, all softwares are created using basic software which is available. For example, consider ubuntu (though its os) the base version is linux which is free to modify. Same way for other applications also. If we read more in details about the software we will get its base.

Now coming to the point, as officially the ideas should be implemented on the company product only where we got lots of obstacles on implementation. So versed programmers used to produce their ideas freely based on the free software and so to prove their knowledge they used to give if free for others or in others name.

On my search, i have found equivalent free software (not shareware, open source) to every kind which is more than enough for an moderate user. Sometimes we get good support also online.

The only problem in using the opensource software is we need to search a lot till we get a knowledge on the software. Whereas on paid, we just need to ring or post a question and we get a reply back. If you have time and patience, open source softwares are more than enough to work with on any conditions.