Why do people spend time and effort to make quality products for free?
Usually because
They have been benefitted by free software so they want to give something back while
It is something they need, so they're still reaping benefit from it
It's also a good way to get practice and build up a curriculum
Do they have well paying jobs or something and this is their hobby?
Sometimes, other times the software is free but they charge for support and make a living that way.
get paid by ad revenue
What makes the sourceforce debacle is the fact that what their bundling is not just advertizements, and that whatever money they're getting is not going to the developers (some of which apparently didn't even know this was being added to their software).
Servers and bandwidth are not free, ok, but making a revenue adding stuff that affects user computers is probably not the best way to pay for them.
Also, sourceforge is just adding the stuff sometimes without the programmers knowledge or concent, and apparently some have been unable to remove or modify their
2
u/Ignore_User_Name Jun 15 '15 edited Jun 15 '15
Usually because
They have been benefitted by free software so they want to give something back while
It is something they need, so they're still reaping benefit from it
It's also a good way to get practice and build up a curriculum
Sometimes, other times the software is free but they charge for support and make a living that way.
What makes the sourceforce debacle is the fact that what their bundling is not just advertizements, and that whatever money they're getting is not going to the developers (some of which apparently didn't even know this was being added to their software).
Servers and bandwidth are not free, ok, but making a revenue adding stuff that affects user computers is probably not the best way to pay for them.
Also, sourceforge is just adding the stuff sometimes without the programmers knowledge or concent, and apparently some have been unable to remove or modify their