Cost of free and proprietary software
Cost of free and proprietary software
Posted Aug 4, 2011 15:53 UTC (Thu) by debacle (subscriber, #7114)Parent article: Emacs and the GPL
Jake Edge wrote:
> There is a cost associated with using free software, and complying with the license is the biggest part of that cost. Proprietary licenses have their costs as well, of course, and those can be partially measured in dollars.
I would like to add, that complying with proprietary licenses is a also a big part of the cost on that side. In many cases, it is even more difficult than with free licenses. Think about licenses that make it hard to change the hardware, or licenses that force you to enjoy long, very boring phone calls etc.
> There is a cost associated with using free software, and complying with the license is the biggest part of that cost. Proprietary licenses have their costs as well, of course, and those can be partially measured in dollars.
I would like to add, that complying with proprietary licenses is a also a big part of the cost on that side. In many cases, it is even more difficult than with free licenses. Think about licenses that make it hard to change the hardware, or licenses that force you to enjoy long, very boring phone calls etc.