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by dave2000
3727 days ago
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A lot of (free | non-free) software is complete trash. The advantage of free software is that it never dies; someone can always, if they want/need, pick it up and use/extend it. You don't have to hope a company does go bust, and pay them for the product and/or support, and keep upgrading your devices to newer, still supported versions. Ok, some of that applies to free software but if you want to you could stick with the old versions, or make changes yourself, or pay someone to. These avenues just aren't open with closed source software. Some people won't be able to afford the commercial products, and the free ones might not be as good/polished but if they get (most of) the job done then they fill a niche. |
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That's a theoretical advantage. In practice lots of things needs to be true for this to happen, even if there's a large user based depending on an abandoned open source program: the code needs to be easily approachable, there should be people willing to extend it who also have the required programming skills etc.
Tons of projects that had lots of users have died or languished.
Heck, even something as popular as GTK+ -- the project is still available, but development has stalled to a halt, and there was a cry of despair from the maintainer that it was just one (one) person doing 90% of the work. If that can happen to GTK+ which is used by millions and powers Gnome, GIMP etc, consider all the other stuff.
Besides, this same theoretical advantage ("never tries") in theory is also potentially true for a proprietary product. Even if the parent company folds, the code and product could always be bought and revived in the future.